Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) affects approximately 5% of the general population and remains a daily problem in the practice of clinicians with inconsistent effectiveness of treatments while patients' expectations are high. One of the functional abnormalities described during IBS is increased intestinal permeability. This increase in intestinal permeability is primarily present in the diarrheal subtype (IBS-D) and can be measured using the lactulose/mannitol test. Glutamine is a non-essential amino acid which regulates numerous metabolic pathways, and which plays a key role in the intestine because it is the preferential substrate of enterocytes and immune cells. Ex vivo, glutamine is able to restore the expression of tight junction proteins in patients suffering from IBS-D. On the other hand, glutamine supplementation is capable of reducing abdominal pain and restoring intestinal permeability disorders in a subgroup of patients with intestinal permeability disorder (post-infectious IBS-D). The working hypothesis would be that all patients suffering from IBS with permeability disorder, measured by the lactulose/mannitol test, could benefit from oral glutamine supplementation.
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Evaluate the symptomatic effectiveness of glutamine supplementation in patients suffering from IBS-D with increased intestinal permeability
Timeframe: 8 weeks