Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells alleviated diarrhea-type irritable bowel syndrome by improving intestinal function

doi:10.4252/wjsc.v17.i12.112100

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World Journal of Stem Cells

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1948-0210

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World J Stem Cells. Dec 26, 2025; 17(12): 112100
Published online Dec 26, 2025. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v17.i12.112100

Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells alleviated diarrhea-type irritable bowel syndrome by improving intestinal function

He-Ming Zhang, Yu Zhang, Guang-Jie Luo, An-Xing Zhang, Ruo-Chang Li, Hai-Bo Dong, Teng-Yun Dong, Peng-Cheng Yu, Ying An, Yan Li

He-Ming Zhang, Yu Zhang, An-Xing Zhang, Ruo-Chang Li, Ying An, Yan Li, Department of Gastroenterology, The First People’s Hospital of Yunnan Province, Affiliated Hospital of Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650032, Yunnan Province, China

Guang-Jie Luo, Hai-Bo Dong, Teng-Yun Dong, Hubei Engineering Research Center for Human Stem Cell Preparation, Application and Resource Preservation, Wuhan Optics Valley Vcanbio Pharma Co. Ltd., Wuhan 430000, Hubei Province, China

Peng-Cheng Yu, Department of Production Technology, Yunnan Heze Southwest Bioscience Co. Ltd., Kunming 650032, Yunnan Province, China

Co-first authors: He-Ming Zhang and Yu Zhang.

Author contributions: Zhang HM, Zhang Y, Luo GJ, Zhang AX, and Li Y designed the study; Li Y was the guarantor and revised the article critically for important intellectual content; Zhang HM, Zhang Y, Luo GJ, Zhang AX, Li RC, Dong HB, Dong TY, Yu PC, and An Y participated in the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of the data and drafted the initial manuscript; All authors participated in the study and jointly reviewed and edited the manuscript. Zhang HM and Zhang Y made significant and equivalent contributions in the research design and manuscript writing and hence are listed as co-authors.

Institutional animal care and use committee statement: The animal experiments conducted in this study was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Cloud-Clone Corp Wuhan (protocol No. IACU23-1252, on November 29, 2023).

Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.

Data sharing statement: The original RNA-seq data used in this study has been submitted to the National Center for Biotechnology Information database, and the BioProject ID is PRJNA1182067. Sequencing was conducted on the Illumina platform, the sequencing results were screened, classified, and then subjected to sequence denoising or OTU clustering through the QIIME2 dada2 analysis process or the analysis process of the Vsearch software. Additional data can be found in the Supplementary material.

Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Corresponding author: Yan Li, PhD, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, The First People’s Hospital of Yunnan Province, Affiliated Hospital of Kunming University of Science and Technology, No. 157 Jinbi Road, Xishan District, Kunming 650032, Yunnan Province, China. hepatocellular@sina.com

Received: July 18, 2025
Revised: August 19, 2025
Accepted: November 6, 2025
Published online: December 26, 2025
Processing time: 161 Days and 0.6 Hours

Abstract

BACKGROUND

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a complex bowel disorder marked by recurrent abdominal pain and irregular stools. The condition is persistent and significantly affects the quality of life of patients. In China, 5.6%-11.5% of the population has IBS, with diarrheal IBS (IBS-D) comprising about 31.5% of the total.

AIM

To investigate how human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) can alleviate the symptoms with the help of an IBS-D rat model.

METHODS

Sixty specific pathogen-free-grade male Sprague-Dawley rats were acquired and divided into five groups: Control group, model group, and three hUC-MSC groups with different doses. The model group was induced using a combination of acetic acid and binding stress. We determined the body weight of the mice; analyzed their fecal characteristics, inflammatory factors, and intestinal tissue damage; and conducted intestinal flora analyses.

RESULTS

The results showed that hUC-MSCs observably restored the dramatic weight loss in the rat model and also lowered the fecal water content to some extent. In addition, hUC-MSCs reduced the expression of inflammatory factors to alleviate the inflammatory response and increased the expression of intestinal barrier functional proteins to restore the colon injury by colonizing the colon tissue. In addition, hUC-MSCs were able to maintain the abundance and diversity of gut flora.

CONCLUSION

Thus, hUC-MSCs can reduce the expression of inflammatory factors, improve the expression of intestinal barrier functional proteins, and maintain the abundance and diversity of intestinal flora in IBS-D by colonizing the colon tissue.

Keywords: Diarrhea-type irritable bowel syndrome; Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells; Gut flora; Intestinal barrier function; Intestinal inflammation

Core Tip: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a complex bowel disorder marked by recurrent abdominal pain and irregular stools. It is a persistent condition greatly affecting patients’ quality of life. We used three different dosages of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells to treat diarrheal IBS using a rat model. We performed a series of experiments and found that human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells could reduce the expression of inflammatory factors, improve the expression of intestinal barrier functional proteins, and maintain the abundance and diversity of intestinal flora to restore the intestinal function of diarrheal IBS by colonizing the colon tissue.