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Record W4411008456 · doi:10.1163/18762891-bja00072

Bacillus coagulans Unique IS2 improves stool characteristics in healthy adults with infrequent bowel movements: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

2025· article· en· W4411008456 on OpenAlex
Ashley LeMoire, Rebecca A Replogle, Leila M Shinn, Alison Kamil, Xinjie Lin, Adam P Kuttenkeuler, Joshua Baisley, Junjun Wang, Stéphanie‐Anne Girard, S. Recker, August Bier

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

VenueBeneficial Microbes · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicGastrointestinal motility and disorders
Canadian institutionsNutrasource
FundersPepsiCo
KeywordsBacillus coagulansPlaceboMedicineInternal medicineGastroenterologyRandomized controlled trialAdverse effectDefecationFecesQuality of life (healthcare)BiologyFood sciencePathologyMicrobiology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Digestive health issues, including irregular bowel movements (BM) and gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, affect millions of people in the United States and are associated with higher risks of various diseases. This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study investigated the potential of Bacillus coagulans Unique IS2 to improve stool characteristics and reduce GI symptoms. Following a 2-week run-in, 144 healthy adults were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to either B. coagulans Unique IS2 (2 billion colony forming units/day) or placebo for 4 weeks. Participants were included if they had an average weekly complete spontaneous bowel movement (SBM) of ≥3.0 and <7.0 during the run-in. The primary outcome was the change in BM frequency after 4 weeks. Secondary outcomes included change in stool consistency (assessed by the Bristol Stool Form Scale), GI symptoms and quality of life, gut microbiota composition, and the proportion of complete SBM to total BM. Safety was assessed by vital signs and reports of adverse events. After 4 weeks of supplementation with Unique IS2, there was a significant increase in BM frequency ( P = 0.037). Stool consistency significantly improved after each week in the Unique IS2 group (all P < 0.05) and was significantly improved compared to a placebo after 4 weeks ( P = 0.018), driven by a significant improvement in the incidence of hard stool ( P = 0.001). There was no effect of Unique IS2 supplementation on GI symptoms and quality of life (Gastrointestinal Quality of Life Index), gut microbiota composition (analysis of stool samples by 16S rRNA), or proportion of complete SBM to total BM. Unique IS2 was safe and well tolerated over the 4 weeks of supplementation. Our results suggest that B. coagulans Unique IS2 is a promising strategy to improve stool characteristics of individuals with hard stools and poor stool quality. Clinicaltrials.gov registration: NCT05123664.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Direct model labels (unvalidated)

Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.

Model armCategoriesStudy designConfidence
gemmano category
Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Randomized triallow
gptno category
Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Randomized trialmedium
models agreeAgreement compares identical category sets and study designs across arms.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Randomized trial · Consensus signal: Randomized trial
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.013
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.013
GPT teacher head0.270
Teacher spread0.258 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it