Nutraceuticals in the Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease: How the Panorama has Changed in the Last Decade?

Abstract

Background: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), mainly Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD), are recurrent idiopathic non-infectious chronic diseases widely diffused worldwide and characterized by moderate to severe mucosal damage.

Objective: This study aims to review the literature of the last 10 years to photograph preclinical and clinical data on the use of nutraceuticals in the prevention and treatment, combined with the conventional drugs, of IBD.

Method: PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and ClinicalTrials.gov were used to search for the most recent publications on in vitro, in vivo, and clinical evidence on IBD and nutraceuticals, which were then assessed based on the originality and scientific rigor of the studies.

Results: In the last decade, the interest in new healthy or therapeutic complementary or alternative approaches to conventional drugs in IBD has grown inexorably, as well as the incidence of these pathologies and the knowledge of their etiopathogenesis. In this context, a growing development of new nutraceutical products with a consequent increase in pre-clinical studies has been observed. However, this panorama does not yet translate into adequate clinical studies that can effectively endorse what was observed in pre-clinical studies; many of them are mostly aimed at resolving diseases related to IBD rather than IBD itself.

Conclusion: Despite the promising pre-clinical data about nutraceuticals and IBD, we are still very far from being able to postulate an adequate nutraceutical treatment of these pathologies and further studies are necessary to support this hypothesis.

Keywords: Chron’s disease; Inflammatory bowel diseases; clinical studies; etiopathogenesis; nutraceuticals; preclinical studies; ulcerative colitis.