Chatbot Helps Users Adopt a Low FODMAP Diet

SAN DIEGO — Low fermentable oligo-, di-, and monosaccharides and polyols (FODMAPs) dietary advice has been shown to be efficient in easing bloating and belly fret, especially in sufferers with sullen bowel syndrome (IBS), but restricted availability of dietitians makes turning in this advice annoying. Researchers from Thailand win successfully enlisted a chatbot to motivate.

In a randomized managed trial, they figured out that chatbot-assisted dietary advice with short guidance effectively reduced high FODMAP intake, bloating severity, and improved dietary knowledge, in particular in sufferers with bothersome bloating. 

“Chatbot-assisted dietary advice for FODMAPs restriction used to be seemingly and applicable in sufferers with bloating symptoms that had baseline symptoms of common severity,” detect chief Pochara Somvanapanich, with the Division of Gastroenterology, Chulalongkorn College and King Chulalongkorn Memorial Sanatorium, Bangkok, Thailand, educated Medscape Clinical News.

Somvanapanich, who developed the chatbot algorithm, offered the detect outcomes at Digestive Illness Week (DDW) 2025. 

More Files, Less Bloating

The trial enrolled 86 adults with disorders of intestine-mind interaction experiencing bloating symptoms for more than 6 months and drinking more than seven high-FODMAPs objects per week. Half of them had IBS. 

At baseline, gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and the flexibility to establish FODMAPs had been assessed. All contributors got a 5-minute session on FODMAPs avoidance from a GI fellow and had been randomly allocated (stratified by IBS diagnosis and education) into two groups. 

The chatbot-assisted neighborhood got real-time dietary advice by skill of a chatbot which helped them establish high, low, and non-FODMAP foods from a listing of more than 300 ingredients/dishes of Thai and western cuisines.

The preserve watch over neighborhood got completely short advice on high FODMAPs restriction. Each groups frail a diary app to log meals intake and postprandial symptoms. Baseline bloating, belly fret and world symptoms severity had been an identical between the 2 groups. Files on 64 contributors (32 in every neighborhood) had been analyzed.

After 4 weeks, enormously more folks in the chatbot neighborhood than the preserve watch over neighborhood spoke back — reaching a 30% or greater slash price in day to day worst bloating, belly fret or world symptoms (19 [59%] vs 10 [31%], P < .05). Responder charges had been an identical in the IBS and non-IBS subgroups. 

Subgroup analysis published foremost differences between groups comely for contributors with bothersome bloating, no longer these with soft bloating severity. 

In these with bothersome bloating severity, the chatbot neighborhood had a greater response price (69.5% vs 36.3%) and fewer bloating symptoms (P < .05). As well they had a greater slash price in high FODMAPs intake (10 vs 23 objects/week) and demonstrated improved knowledge in identifying FODMAPs (P < .05).

“Responders in a chatbot neighborhood repeatedly engaged more with the app, performing enormously more weekly item searches than nonresponders (P < .05),” the authors well-known of their conference summary.

“Our subsequent step is to create the chatbot-assisted skill for the reintroduction and personalization part in step with messenger applications (at the side of Fb Messenger and diversified messaging platforms),” Somvanapanich educated Medscape Clinical News.

“When we’ve gathered enough knowledge to ascertain these are working effectively, we no doubt concept to create a one-quit service utility for FODMAPs dietary advice,” Somvanapanich added. 

Lack of Sturdy Files on Digital GI Health Apps

Commenting on this research for Medscape Clinical News, Sidhartha R. Sinha, MD, Director of Digital Health and Innovation, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Stanford College in Stanford, California, well-known that there is a “principal lack of sturdy knowledge supporting digital health tools in gastroenterology. Regardless of hundreds of apps readily available, completely a few are supported by well-designed trials.”

“The detect demonstrated that chatbot-assisted dietary advice enormously improved bloating symptoms, reduced intake of high-FODMAP foods, and enhanced sufferers’ dietary knowledge when put next to short dietary counseling by myself, especially in these with bothersome symptoms,” stated Sinha, who wasn’t inviting in the detect.

“Sufferers actively frail the chatbot to preserve watch over their symptoms, reaching a greater response price than these in the preserve watch over arm who got short counseling on averting high-FODMAP meals,” he well-known.

Sinha stated in his note at Stanford, “in the coronary heart of Silicon Valley,” sufferers attain employ digital sources to preserve watch over their GI symptoms, at the side of ailments esteem IBS and inflammatory bowel illness (IBD) — and he believes this is “increasingly total nationally.”

“However, the need for evidence-based mostly tools is serious and the shortage here usually prevents many practitioners from usually recommending them to sufferers. This detect aligns well with scientific note, and helps the usage of this particular app to toughen IBS symptoms, in particular when access to dietitians is proscribed. These outcomes toughen chatbot-assisted dietary management as a seemingly, efficient, and scalable skill to affected person care,” Sinha educated Medscape Clinical News.

The detect got no commercial funding. Somvanapanich and Sinha had no relevant disclosures.