.... Homeostasis Immune surveillance Genetic defects Chronic colonization Carcinoma IBD Helicobacter pylori The gastrointestinal epithelium constitutes the inside-outside interface of our body, which separates the luminal microbiota from our interior. This border is maintained through finetuned...

...S. Burman; E.C. Hoedt; S. Pottenger; N.-S. Mohd-Najman; P. Ó Cuív; Mark Morrison While it is now accepted that the gut microbiota contribute to the genotype-environment-lifestyle interactions triggering inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) episodes, efforts to identify the pathogen(s) that cause...

...Gerassimos J. Mantzaris In the last 20 years, the advent of anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) biologics has revolutionized the treatment of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) but the cost of biologic therapy now constitutes a large proportion of all healthcare expenditures. Patent...

...David Laharie Management of patients with IBD and a past or current malignancy has become more frequent in daily practice. As trends in IBD therapy are moving to more immunomodulators, administered earlier and for longer periods than ever, an increasing number of IBD patients with a prior...

... discontinue anti-TNF therapy and switch to another class of medications or consider surgical options. There is increasing use of therapeutic drug monitoring to tailor treatment of the individual patients with IBD who are treated with biologics. This article reviews why drug concentrations vary between...

...Claudio Fiocchi The complexity of IBD is well recognized as are the putative four major components of its pathogenesis, i.e. environment, genetic makeup, gut microbiota and mucosal immune response. Each of these components is extremely complex on its own, and at present should be more appropriately...

...Gerassimos J. Mantzaris Patients with IBD and prior cancer are at increased risk of developing recurrent or de novo cancer. Depending on the type of malignancy, risk factors include IBD itself, age, environmental factors, genetic susceptibility and exposure to immunosuppressants (IMS), namely...

...Carlo De Salvo; Shuvra Ray; Theresa T. Pizarro Intestinal fibrosis is a common outcome in IBD leading to significant morbidity that, to date, has no effective medical treatment. Current knowledge regarding potential mechanism(s) of intestinal fibrogenesis and stricture formation is limited, due...

... fibrosis. In this view, fibrosis is a pathologically augmented healing response to inflammation-induced mucosal tissue destruction and injury. At present, there are no approved or effective medical therapies aimed specifically at fibrosis or stricture in IBD. Indirect benefits may occur from anti...

...Harry Sokol The involvement of the gut microbiota in the pathogenesis of IBD is supported by many findings and is thus now commonly acknowledged. The imbalance in the composition of the microbiota (dysbiosis) observed in IBD patients is one of the strongest arguments and provides the rationale...