A Pilot Study Assessing the Efficacy of Short Duration Six Food Elimination Diet in Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE)

Dietary therapy has been shown to be successful in the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). Dietary studies were initially reported in children, but the results appear to be similar in adult patients. Elemental diets are successful in 70-95% of patients but are poorly tolerated.

The six food elimination diet (SFED) involves the elimination of the six most common food allergens (i.e. milk, wheat, soy, eggs, nuts, and fish) for six weeks and has become the mainstay of dietary therapy in EoE. A six week SFED has demonstrated excellent efficacy and durability in both pediatric and adult EoE. However, compliance with the SFED for a total of six weeks can be challenging for patients.

Previous studies have found the esophageal sponge to be an accurate technique of accessing esophageal eosinophilia in EoE . The sponge is swallowed as a 12 mm capsule on a string. The capsule rapidly dissolves upon entering the stomach and the sponge then expands and can be pulled out the mouth five minutes after ingestion. In previous studies, the procedure was very well tolerated and all patients preferred the sponge to endoscopy. Therefore the sponge is a well tolerated, inexpensive, very low risk procedure that would be an ideal option to replace EGD esophageal sampling in the evaluation of dietary treatment of EoE.

Although initially described as a six week trial, it is possible that a shorter duration food elimination diet of 2 or 4 weeks would have equal efficacy. This would have important implications for patients as it would make the diet more tolerable.