Protocol for a scoping review of fecal microbiota transplantation from patients into animals

Abstract

Microbiota studies have uncovered numerous associations between human gut microbes and health-related outcomes. However, since most of these correlations were observed in cross-sectional studies, the causal infe - rence is limited. The causal contribution of microbiota can be evidenced through disease induction or exacerba - tion in animal models after fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) from patients. In this article we present a protocol for a scoping review on the subject of FMT from humans to animals. Besides assessing how the published studies were conducted, in that scoping review we aim to find out whether enough literature exists to conduct a systematic review of the evidence for microbiota participation in the pathophysio - logy of any human non-infectious disease or phenotypic trait. We will conduct searches on the Web of Science platform and databases: MEDLINE, Scopus, EMBASE. Citation chasing of included studies will be done. We will include studies assessing the effects of FMT collected from people with certain medical conditions on animals. Studies that recruited only healthy humans or used other animals as donors will be excluded. The results of this literature search will be tabulated and discussed. Moreover, we will provide a short list of human non-infectious diseases or traits with the highest number of FMT patient-to-animal studies.