Update on intestinal microbiota in Crohn's disease 2017: Mechanisms, clinical application, adverse reactions, and outlook

Abstract

The pathogenesis of Crohn's disease (CD) is complex, and it is thought to be associated with the environment, immune, hereditary, microbe, and other factors. If the balance between the host and the intestinal microbes in CD patients was broken, immune-inflammatory response of susceptible individuals might be triggered. Probiotics could improve the intestinal microbial flora balance and treat human effectively. There are several new mechanisms that might explain the role of probiotics. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is becoming more and more attractive in treating a large amount of digestive system diseases that are related to the dysbiosis of intestinal microbiota. FMT has been widely used in recurrent Clostridium difficile infection. More and more attention has been paid on the clinical application of FMT in CD, while the exact mechanism is still a mystery. So in this review, we explore the mechanism, clinical application, and adverse reactions of intestinal microbiota in CD so that we can use the tool to cure more diseases. Enteric microbiota leads to new therapeutic strategies for CD.

Keywords: Crohn's disease; adverse reactions; fecal microbiota transplantation; intestinal microbiota; probiotics.