Objective: To explore the effect, safety and underlying mechanisms of gut microbiome intervention via FMT on aging. Study Design: A multi-center, randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled pilot study. Data quality control and statistical analysis: The investigators have invited professional statistic analysts to assist analyzing data and a third party to supervise data quality. Ethics: The Ethics Committee of Fuwai Hospital approved this study. Informed consents before patient enrollment are required.
A severe public health issue facing global population is aging. Increasing preclinical and clinical data indicate the contribution of gut microbiome on aging and aging-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer Disease, and diabetes. Interventions on microbiota are developed including prebiotics, probiotics, and fecal microbial transplantation (FMT). FMT via oral capsules also advances in recent with limited safety concerns compared with invasive routes. A hypothesis is thus raised that gut microbiome intervention via oral FMT can be a potential safe approach to encourage healthy aging, with multiple aspects evaluated for clinical phenotype of frailty, anthropometric measurement, cognitive function, cardiovascular aging, physical function, living activity, hippocampal volume, telomere length, cognitive biomarkers, inflammatory biomarkers, altered microbial composition and metabolites.