Plant Exosomes +/- Curcumin to Abrogate Symptoms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Up to 90 patients with Chronic IBD will be enrolled, with the goal of having three arms of 30 subjects in each group who are eligible for evaluation.

This exploratory trial is designed to estimate the effect of ginger exosomes or curcumin on IBD symptoms compared to ginger exosomes plus curcumin. In this prospective and randomized study the main focus is to compare exosomes alone, curcumin, and exosomes plus curcumin. Three primary stratification factors race (white and black), gender and type of IBD (CD and UC) will be used. plan Zelen's (1974) method will be used to avoid imbalance allocation within each stratum. A block size of 4 will be used. We plan to enroll all eligible patients visiting the clinic, as well as eligible patients referred from other gastroenterologists. All eligible visiting our clinic will be enrolled. By enrolling consecutive patients, we reduce selection bias. A patient will be enrolled only once.

The most important aim of this study is to compare the IBD symptoms in exosomes alone and exosomes plus curcumin groups of patients. The symptomatology will be measured in each group and compared to the self-reported score. We will use the incidence rate of bloody stool to justify the sample size. With the combination treatment (ginger exosomes plus curcumin as compared to curcumin alone) we hope to reduce symptoms by at least 30%. Using a two sample one-sided t test for comparing mean differences in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire, with 30 subjects in each group and using alpha=5%, we will have 80% power to detect effect size of 0.65 Standard Deviation, which is a large effect size (Cohen, 1988).. When the reduction in sample size due to missing data or other reasons, we will have reduced power to detect the difference in two groups.

Inclusion criteria

• Patients must have a confirmed diagnosis of IBD (either CD or UC) with moderate disease activity.)
• Ability to independently care for oneself

Exclusion criteria

• Pregnancy
• Known HIV
• Patients receiving immunosuppressive drugs, other than for their bowel disease
• Patients must be on stable doses of their medications for the 2 weeks prior to study entry and for the duration of the treatment period, or inform the investigator of any changes in medication
• Active malignancy in the last 5 years
• Patients receiving any other investigational agent(s)
• Ginger allergy