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World J Clin Cases. Jan 16, 2021; 9(2): 321-333
Published online Jan 16, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i2.321
Gut microbiota and inflammatory bowel disease: The current status and perspectives
Lie Zheng, Xin-Li Wen
Lie Zheng, Xin-Li Wen, Department of Gastroenterology, Shaanxi Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Xi’an 730000, Shaanxi Province, China
Author contributions: Zheng L wrote and revised the manuscript; Zheng L and Wen XL designed the work and supervised preparation of the manuscript.
Supported by Shaanxi Province Natural Science Basic Research Program-general Project, No. 2019JM-580; Project of Shaanxi Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 2019-ZZ-JC0010; and Shaanxi Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 2018-04.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Xin-Li Wen, Director, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, Shaanxi Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 4 Xihuamen, Xi’an 730000, Shaanxi Province, China. xinliwen696@126.com
Received: October 18, 2020
Peer-review started: October 18, 2020
First decision: November 20, 2020
Revised: November 20, 2020
Accepted: December 6, 2020
Article in press: December 6, 2020
Published online: January 16, 2021
Abstract

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic immune-mediated disease that affects the gastrointestinal tract. It is argued that environment, microbiome, and immune-mediated factors interact in a genetically susceptible host to trigger IBD. Recently, there has been increased interest in the development, progression, and treatment of IBD because of our understanding of the microbiome. Researchers have proved that some factors can alter the microbiome and the pathogenesis of IBD. As a result, there has been increasing interest in the application of probiotics, prebiotics, antibiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation, and gene manipulation in treating IBD because of the possible curative effect of microbiome-modulating interventions. In this review, we summarize the findings from human and animal studies and discuss the effect of the gut microbiome in treating patients with IBD.

Keywords: Inflammatory bowel disease, Microbiome, Inflammation, Genetics, Antibiotics, Probiotics

Core Tip: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic immune-mediated disease that affects the gastrointestinal tract. Researchers have proved that some factors can alter the microbiome and the pathogenesis of IBD. These include mutations in genes involved in microbiome-immune interactions and microbiota-modulating risk factors such as antibiotic use, cigarette smoking, levels of sanitation, and diet. As a result, there has been increasing interest in the application of probiotics, prebiotics, antibiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation, and gene manipulation in treating IBD because of the possible curative effect of these microbiome-modulating interventions.