Submitted by aml95 on Tue, 29/07/2025 - 08:30
Research published in Gut and led by Dr Chris Bannon from the Gribble/Reimann group at the IMS-MRL, has highlighted an important role that gut hormones play in patients with chronic diarrhoea.
The gut is known to release over 20 different hormones with actions including controlling appetite, blood sugar and speed of gut movements.
The research team utilised a new immunoassay technique to measure the understudied gut hormone - insulin-like peptide 5 (INSL5) - in human blood samples.
INSL5 is produced only at the end of the colon and rectum. It has been shown to cause increased colon movements and urgent bowel opening in animal studies, an effect that could be blocked with a medication called ondansetron, which is used for nausea. The team’s previous work has shown that bile acids can stimulate release of this hormone from cultured colonic cells.
This new study shows that circulating levels of INSL5 rise when bile acids are delivered to the rectum. The group found INSL5 levels to be low in healthy volunteers, but raised in patients with bile acid diarrhoea (BAD) - a difficult to diagnose condition where the diarrhoea is associated with increased colonic bile acids. It was also raised in a subset of patients with IBS and interestingly, those patients responded well to ondansetron, consistent with results from previous animal studies.
This study is the first to highlight that gut hormones can play a role in patients with chronic diarrhoea and offers a new potential mechanism and therapeutic target.
Full story on University of Cambridge website
News on NIHR Cambridge BRC site
Reference
Bannon, CA et al. Insulin like peptide 5 is released in response to bile acid in the rectum and is associated with diarrhoea severity in patients with bile acid diarrhoea. Gut; 23 July 2025; DOI: 10.1136/gutjnl-2025-335393
