What Researchers Did
Researchers ran a small pilot trial giving people with hard-to-treat ulcerative colitis either 10 or 20 daily hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) sessions, in addition to their usual medication.
What They Found
In this open-label pilot trial of 16 patients with ulcerative colitis that had not responded to at least two advanced therapies, 2 of 8 patients who received 10 HBOT sessions and 4 of 8 patients who received 20 HBOT sessions met the study's combined clinical and endoscopic response goal at week 12. Patients who responded showed increased blood flow to the bowel wall on ultrasound imaging (a rise of 12.1 dB), while patients who did not respond showed a decrease (a drop of 5.4 dB). No patients had serious side effects, and no one stopped treatment because of it.
What This Means for Canadian Patients
For Canadians with ulcerative colitis that has not responded to at least two advanced therapies, this small pilot study found that adding HBOT to ongoing treatment was well tolerated, with no serious side effects. However, only a minority of patients in each group met the study's response criteria, and because the trial had no comparison group and everyone knew they were receiving HBOT, it cannot show that HBOT itself caused the improvements seen in some patients.
Canadian Relevance
No direct Canadian connection identified.
Study Limitations
This was a very small, open-label pilot of only 16 patients with no control group, so the response rates and perfusion findings cannot establish that HBOT caused the improvements observed.