 Patients with acute pouchitis are typically treated with metronidazole or ciprofloxacin for 10-14 days. Most patients with pouchitis respond to these or other antibiotics. Patients who experience frequent relapses and those with chronic pouchitis will require long term maintenance antibiotics. Probiotics may be considered as an alternate to chronic antibiotic therapy for maintenance of remission in chronic antibiotic-dependent pouchitis. In practice, we would institute maintenance therapy for patients who relapse at least 3 times within one year, or within 1 month of discontinuation of antibiotics. Among patients receiving maintenance antibiotics who develop loss of clinical benefit after prolonged treatment, rotation of three or four antibiotics in 1-week intervals may be beneficial. Patients who do not improve with single antibiotics may respond to combination therapy with two antibiotics. If not, they can be treated with topical or oral budesonide. Other options include topical mesalamine enemas or suppositories, oral sulfasalazine or mesalamine, other topical or oral steroids, and possibly oral bismuth, azathioprine, 6-mercaptopurine or infliximab. However, there is little evidence base for these therapies in the literature, and many of these therapies are expensive andor potentially toxic. A therapy that does not suppress the immune system, and that has little or no toxicity would be attractive for patients with antibiotic-refractory pouchitis. 