Patients are always interested in understanding what they should eat and how it will impact their health. Physicians are just as interested in advancing their understanding of the major health effects of foods and food-related diseases. To satisfy this need, the editors of Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association, are pleased to announce the publication of this year's highly anticipated special 13th issue on food, the immune system and the gastrointestinal tract.
"This special issue provides a tour de force of biological and clinical data regarding how food impacts health and disease," said Douglas A. Corley, MD, PhD, MPH, and Detlef Schuppan, MD, PhD, guest editors for this special issue. "We hope this will inform future research by identifying gaps in knowledge, while providing patients and clinicians with evidence-based summaries to guide clinical recommendations."
In the last two decades, we have witnessed a marked expansion of research into how food and nutritional elements influence health and disease. Food and its interactions with the immune system are a critical topic for gastroenterology to address, changing our view of digestion and resorption of food as the principal role of the gastrointestinal tract. Articles in this special issue of Gastroenterology evaluate immunology, biological mechanisms and clinical studies of foods and food-related diseases for all the major topic areas, including food allergies, celiac disease, non-celiac wheat sensitivity, carbohydrate (FODMAP) intolerance in relation to irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, obesity and brain-gut interactions.
The specific topics covered in this special 13th issue of Gastroenterology are outlined below.
Food and the Microbiome
- Diet in the Pathogenesis and Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases; by Dale Lee, et al.
- The question of what to eat is among the most commonly asked by patients, and among the most difficult to answer for clinicians.
- Food, Immunity, and the Microbiome; by Herbert Tilg and Alexander R. Moschen
- By increasing our understanding of interactions between diet, immunity and the microbiota, we might develop food-based approaches to prevent or treat many diseases.
Food Allergies
- Food Allergies: The Basics; by Rudolf Valenta, et al.
- Learning about the structure of disease-causing food allergens has allowed researchers to engineer synthetic and recombinant vaccines.
- Nutrients, Foods, and Colorectal Cancer Prevention; by Mingyang Song, et al.
- Diet likely influences colorectal carcinogenesis through several interacting mechanisms. These include the direct effects on immune responsiveness and inflammation, and the indirect effects of overnutrition and obesity -- risk factors for colorectal cancer.