ClinicalTrials.gg
CompletedNCT06022588Updated Sep 5, 2023

Chronic Mesenteric Ischemia Breath Testing

An interventional study of Sodium butyrate, 1-13C, 99%, Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc.USA and U-13C6, 99%; Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc.USA in Chronic Mesenteric Ischemia, sponsored by Erasmus Medical Center. Completed at 1 site in Netherlands. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2023-09-05.

Primary conditionnone(registry's first term: Disease)No conditionIs this wrong?Disease describes something many studies share rather than a condition a study is about. The study names no condition we can place it under, so it is not compared with other studies by condition.

Sponsored by Erasmus Medical Center · Not applicable, Interventional, and Diagnostic

From the registry’s dates

  • Registered 2 years 4 months after the study started (first participant enrolled Mar 2021, registered Jul 2023).
Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
20
Allocation
Randomized
Sex
All
01

Study summary

Background and aims:

A gold standard diagnostic test to diagnose chronic mesenteric ischemia is currently lacking. Isotope labelled-butyrate and glucose breath testing could theoretically quantify mucosal oxygen consumption and thereby detect ischemia, since oxygen is needed to absorb and metabolize butyrate and glucose, and distinguish aerobic/anaerobic intestinal epithelial metabolism. Here we aim to test this notion and compare results to conventional biomarkers.

Methods:

Healthy volunteers were randomized into two control groups and two intervention groups, each consisting of five volunteers receiving either oral 13C -butyrate or 13C -glucose. The control groups performed breath tests without any physical exercise. The intervention groups performed a 30 minutes standardized bicycle exercise test, which has been proven to elicit mesenteric ischemia. Breath samples of expired 13CO2 were collected during a period of 4 hours and results were contrasted to measurements of biomarkers in peripheral blood.

Read the detailed description

Even as chronic mesenteric ischemia (CMI) is the most common vascular disorder involving the mesenteric arteries, accounting for 2% of all revascularization procedures, it remains an underdiagnosed condition. CMI is an invalidating disease that causes severe complaints of post-prandial abdominal pain, food fear and weight loss. Diagnosis of CMI remains difficult since no gold standard diagnostic test exists, the presumptive diagnosis of CMI is currently confirmed when a patient experiences relief of symptoms after revascularization. For making treatment decisions, clinicians rely on a consensus diagnosis, based on clinical history, presence of mesenteric artery stenosis on abdominal imaging, and, in dedicated centers, the outcome of a functional test, such as visible light spectroscopy (VLS) or tonometry. The diagnostic accuracy of this consensus diagnosis is unstatisfactory, since clinical improvement is achieved in only 73% of patients with a consensus diagnosis of CMI based on a single mesenteric artery stenosis. Per extenso in the remaining 27% treatment was initiated in patients not suffering from CMI. Stressing the need for a reliable diagnostic test to identify patients with CMI.

In the intestinal epithelium the most important substrate for mitochondrion-dependent ATP production, and by consequence as the source for CO2 release is butyrate, a small chain fatty acid produced by the intestinal microflora. Under ischemic conditions, butyrate can no longer be metabolized. The most straight forward biochemical pathway to cope with this situation is a switch in cellular metabolism to anaerobic glycolysis. In this process glucose is metabolized to pyruvate, producing two ATP molecules, providing an oxygen independent pathway for maintaining ATP production, but also resulting in the reduction of NAD+ molecules into NADH+. To maintain ATP production, pyruvate will undergo a process called fermentation resulting in the production of lactate in which NADH+ is recycled back to NAD+ so that glycolysis can continue. Upon subsequent transport via the blood, lactate is cleared in the liver and the resulting CO2 will leave the body via the lungs. Hence theoretically measuring the shift from butyrate towards glucose metabolism, which occurs in enterocytes under anaerobic conditions, could be a method to detect mucosal ischemia.

This multi-center randomized interventional proof of principal study explored the possibility to quantify mucosal oxygen content by labeled-butyrate and labelled-glucose breath testing as a potential test to diagnose CMI. Since both substrates are dependent on oxygen to be metabolized, it is expected that subjects with low mucosal oxygen concentrations will metabolize less butyrate and glucose compared to subjects with normal mucosal oxygen concentrations.

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Conditions studied

  • Chronic Mesenteric Ischemia

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Keywords

  • Chronic mesenteric ischemia
  • Diagnostic
  • Breath test
03

In context

Lead sponsor

Erasmus Medical Center is the lead sponsor of 478 studies on the registry; 183 are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

04

Who can participate

Ages eligible
Child (0–17), Adult (18–64), Older adult (65+)
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
Yes

Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.

Inclusion criteria

  • healthy volunteers without any gastrointestinal complaints

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  • pregnant woman
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Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Diagnostic
Allocation
Randomized
Intervention model
Single group
Masking
None (open label)
Enrollment
20 participants (actual)

Study arms

  • Placebo comparator
    13C -butyrate control group

    5 healthy volunteers performed the breath test without any psychical exercise

    Drug: Sodium butyrate, 1-13C, 99%, Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc.USA · Diagnostic Test: Breath test

  • Experimental
    13C -butyrate intervention group

    5 healthy volunteers performed the breath test with psychical exercise - bicycle test

    Drug: Sodium butyrate, 1-13C, 99%, Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc.USA · Diagnostic Test: Exercise + breath test

  • Placebo comparator
    13C -glucose control group

    5 healthy volunteers performed the breath test without any psychical exercise

    Drug: U-13C6, 99%; Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc.USA · Diagnostic Test: Exercise + breath test

  • Experimental
    13C -glucose intervention group

    5 healthy volunteers performed the breath test with psychical exercise - bicycle test

    Drug: U-13C6, 99%; Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc.USA · Diagnostic Test: Exercise + breath test

Interventions

  • DrugSodium butyrate, 1-13C, 99%, Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc.USA

    a solution containing butyrate of which 12C of the last 4 carbon positions of butyrate were replaced by 13C butyrate. Participants received 0.80 gram 13C-butyrate (7.3 mMol butyrate / 29 mMol 13C) dissolved in 50 mL water at baseline

    Also known as: 13C butyrate

  • DrugU-13C6, 99%; Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc.USA

    a glucose solution in which all six 12C carbons were replaced by 13C D-Glucose. Participants received 0.75 gram 13C-glucose (4.2 mMol D-glucose/ 25 mMol 13C) dissolved in 50 mL water at baseline

    Also known as: 13C glucose

  • Diagnostic testBreath test

    Breath tests were performed at the following time points baseline, 0.5, 1, 1.25 1.5, 1.75, 2, 2.25, 2.5, 3, 3.5 and 4 hours after ingestion of 13C-butyrate and 13C-glucose. Breath samples were obtained by blowing a single breath of air through a straw into a test tube. Two breath samples were collected at all mentioned time points. Measurement of 13CO2 is performed using mass spectrometry (IDMicro Breath, Compact Science Systems, Newcastle-Under-Lyme, United Kingdom) using procedures described earlier for galactose and methacetin breath tests, and expressed as an absolute increase in the 13CO2-to-12CO2 ratio in delta permil (δ‰).

  • Diagnostic testExercise + breath test

    The intervention groups performed a standardized bicycle ergometer exercise test of 30 minutes and semi-continuous peripheral blood lactate monitoring. The bicycle ergometer protocol consists of three phases. The first 10 minutes of exercise was used to gradually increase the workload until submaximal exercise intensity was reached which is defined as a circulating blood lactate level between 3 and 5.5 mmol/L. From minute 10 to 20 submaximal exercise intensity was maintained by adjusting the workload based on lactate measurements. Minute 20 to 30 was used to reach maximal exercise intensity, the workload was increased by 10% of the submaximal workload until exhaustion

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What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. The median concentrations of measured 13CO2

    The median concentrations of measured 13CO2 at each time point where compared within the four groups and statistically tested with a Mann - Whitney U test.

    Time frame: At the following time points; baseline, 0.5, 1, 1.25 1.5, 1.75, 2, 2.25, 2.5, 3, 3.5 and 4 hours (total of 12 time points) after ingestion of 13C-butyrate or 13C-glucose.

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Study locations

1 site
  • Erasmus Medical Center - Department of Gastroenterology
    Rotterdam, Netherlands
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References and documents

Study documents

PDFs hosted by the registry, ClinicalTrials.gov.

Individual participant data

Plan to share: No

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Timeline

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
ElapsedEstimatedEstimated, not yet reached

Ran from Mar 2021 to primary completion in Apr 2021, 1 month.

How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.

Registered
Jul 26, 2023
First posted
Sep 5, 2023
StartActual
Mar 1, 2021
Primary completionActual
Apr 1, 2021
CompletionActual
Aug 1, 2021
Last update
Sep 5, 2023
What these dates mean
Start.
When the first participant enrolled; while estimated, when the study expects to open to recruitment.
Primary completion.
When the last participant was examined or treated to collect data for the study's main question, its primary outcome. A study that stopped early gives the date its data collection stopped.
Completion.
When the last participant's last visit took place, for every outcome, secondary ones and side effects included: the end of the study. Often later than primary completion, sometimes the same day.
Actual and Est.
Actual means the registry says the date has happened. Est. (estimated) is a date the sponsor plans or expects. It can still move, and the sponsor is expected to change it to actual once it has passed.
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Sep 5, 2023, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT06022588
Responsible party
Marco J. Bruno (Gastroenterologist, Erasmus Medical Center) — Principal investigator
First posted
Sep 5, 2023
Start date
Mar 1, 2021
Primary completion
Apr 1, 2021
Completion
Aug 1, 2021
Last update
Sep 5, 2023

Study contacts

Marco Bruno, prof.
principal investigator · Erasmus Medical Center

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
Yes
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

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