Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic disease with elusive etiology. It has the characteristics of high-risk recurrence and canceration, which is gradually becoming one of the major health challenges facing China. At present, traditional treatment of IBD is mainly to use drugs to control symptoms, whereas multiple limiting factors emerge in clinical use. Some patients may relapse or progress into other complications. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a safer, more efficient and more convenient new therapy for IBD.

To resolve this bottleneck issue, the team of Professor Dang Chengxue from Department of Surgical Oncology of the First Affiliated Hospital (FAH) of Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) cooperated with the team led by Professor Zhang Guanjun from School of Electrical Engineering of XJTU to employ the technology of cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) and put forward a novel treatment idea for restoring redox homeostasis and reversing microbiota dysbiosis in the bowel environment of IBD patients. The research teams innovatively adopted plasma-activated solutions (PAS) activated by low-temperature atmospheric plasma, which is safe, stable, milder, abundant in various active ions and more convenient to use. This study found that PAS can effectively alleviate DSS-induced acute colitis in mice, mitigate intestinal inflammation and oxidative stress, and help restore and rebuild intestinal epithelial barrier and microbiota. Supplementing certain PAS in advance can effectively prevent the recurrence of colitis. These findings suggest that PAS can alleviate acute colitis by regulating redox homeostasis and reversing microbiota homeostasis in bowel environment, and can also prevent the incidence of acute colitis. Based on these phenomena, the research teams further discovered the important role of nitrogen-containing compounds in the therapeutic treatment of PAS, and initially established stable preparation and storage patterns for PAS, which is cheaper than direct application of CAP. Taken together, the research teams discover the positive role of PAS in the treatment of IBD. Excellent characteristics of simple preparation, convenient storage, safety and stability provide new strategies for the mechanism and standardized treatment of applying PAS in clinical management of IBD.

The above results were published as an article entitled “Plasma-Activated Solutions Mitigates DSS-Induced Colitis via Restoring Redox Homeostasis and Reversing Microbiota Dysbiosis” in Advanced Science (IF:15.1), an internationally restigious journal. Doctoral student Sun Tuanhe and doctoral student Ren Kaijie from the FAH of XJTU are the co-first authors. Professor Dang Chengxue from Department of Surgical Oncology of the FAH of XJTU, Associate Researcher Zhang Hao from Department of Surgical Oncology, and Professor Zhang Guanjun from School of Electrical Engineering of XJTU are the co-corresponding authors. The FAH of XJTU is the first affiliation of this article.