Capsules containing microorganisms from the stool of healthy donors may help people with chronic insomnia sleep better. Chinese scientists came to this conclusion based on the results of a small clinical study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine. One month after treatment, sleep efficiency in patients receiving fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) therapy was higher than in those receiving placebo.
So-called “stool pills” are capsules containing processed material obtained from the feces of healthy donors. In this way, beneficial intestinal microorganisms can enter the patient’s intestines and help restore the disturbed composition of his microflora.
Short-term insomnia can occur due to stress, changes in daily routine or environment and last several days or weeks. More dangerous is chronic insomnia, which occurs at least three times a week and lasts more than three months. It can negatively impact memory and concentration and is associated with an increased risk of a number of diseases. This is what Chinese scientists decided to study.
The researchers were interested in whether changing the composition of the gut microbiota could affect sleep quality. Microbiota is the community of bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms that naturally live in the human body, including the intestines.
The study involved 80 adults with chronic insomnia. Half of them first received a short course of antibiotics, after which they received capsules with fecal microbiota from healthy donors. The remaining 40 participants were given a placebo without prior antibiotic treatment.
“The primary outcome was sleep efficiency measured using polysomnography one month after treatment. Secondary outcomes included other polysomnographic parameters, patient-reported sleep measures, and safety outcomes; the microbiota analysis was exploratory in nature,” the scientific publication says.
After one month, sleep efficiency in patients treated with FMT was on average 13.9 percentage points higher than in the control group. They also spent less time awake after initially falling asleep.
The participants themselves noticed improvements. Scores on the Insomnia Severity Scale and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index remained better than the control group from two to six months after treatment.
The therapy was generally well tolerated. Some participants experienced mild side effects that went away on their own; the researchers did not record any serious adverse events.
The scientists also found that after therapy, the patients' gut microbiota became richer, more diverse, and its structure changed.
“In adults with chronic insomnia, a fecal microbiota transplant-based treatment protocol that included pretreatment with antibiotics improved objective measures of sleep continuity and subjective measures associated with insomnia,” the study said.
Moreover, the result depended not only on the treatment itself. Patients who responded to therapy and those who did not have different compositions of their intestinal microbiota even before the experiment began. According to the authors, this may mean that a person's baseline microbiome influences the effectiveness of such treatments.
