A Dietary Intervention Study on the Microbiome in Crohn's Disease Patients

This protocol is designed to compare the effectiveness of a soy-based diet or identical diet without soy given to patients with Crohn's disease (CD) in remission, patients with active CD, or healthy controls. The assigned diet will be compared to participant 'baseline' (pre-diet) in terms of its ability to change the gut bacteria and fecal butyrate, an important short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) that limits bowel inflammation, a characteristic of this debilitating disease.

The inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) subtype, Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic and relapsing inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract. Although the precise etiology of IBD is not known, evidence suggests that environmental factors, including diet, contribute to its pathogenesis. A soy-based diet has been demonstrated to have numerous health benefits. This single-center open-label study will compare the effectiveness of a soy-based diet or an identical diet without soy to change the gut microbiota composition and fecal butyrate concentration to that of baseline (pre-diet) in patients with CD (remission or active disease) and healthy control subjects without CD. Participants will follow either a soy-based diet or an identical diet without soy to which they will be randomized for 7 days. No data collection or other study procedures will take place until the potential participant provides written informed consent to participate in the research study. The informed consent, screening, enrollment, and baseline data collection which make up visit 1 can occur on the same day or be completed across several days.