Investigation of the stool microbiome of short bowel syndrome patients before and after a 24-week treatment with the glucagon-like peptide 2 analog glepaglutide.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Glucagon, published as a phase 3 clinical trial.

Glepaglutide is a long-acting glucagon-like peptide 2 (GLP-2) analog under development for the treatment of short bowel syndrome (SBS).

Glepaglutide enhances intestinal absorption, which may hypothetically lead to changes in the intestinal microbiota, mainly by slowing gastrointestinal transit time.

Why It Was Studied

Gov no: NCT04991311; ClincalTrialsRegister.eu EudraCT no: 2020-005194-27.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 10 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as open-label.

Nothing was hidden in this open-label Glucagon study: the patients and staff both knew the treatment.

Bacterial load was quantified using a spike-in approach, and microbiota composition was assessed by V3V4 16S rRNA gene sequencing.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Short Bowel Syndrome, Glucagon-Like Peptide 2, Feces, Gastrointestinal Microbiome, Bacterial Load, Intestinal Absorption and Gastrointestinal Agents.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Glepaglutide, Glucagon-like peptide 2 analog, Intestinal microbiota, Quantitative microbiome profiling and Small intestine.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is an open-label study of Glucagon in 10 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2026 (Clinical nutrition ESPEN), a journal based in England.

More context: the Glucagon compound page, all human trials.