DIETARY FACTORS IN THE PATHOGENESIS OF IN FLAMMATORY BOWEL-DISEASE

It is currently held that the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disea se (IBD) involves a complex interaction of host responses, some immuno logic and genetically determined, and external influences including mi crobial and dietary factors. Nutritional surveys and studies testing s tepwise, exclusion dietary compounds have suggested that dietary facto rs might be linked to tile occurrence of IBD. Food allergy was suggest ed early as a possible trigger for the inflammatory response; however, no firm evidence has been gathered over the years to substantiate thi s possibility. The possibility that patients with Crohn's disease may have an unusual premorbid pattern of dietary intake was also been exam ined since the early seventies. Several groups of investigators report a high intake of refined sugars (i.e. sucrose), recycled cooking oil, a more frequent consumption of fast foods in patients with Crohn's di sease and ulcerative colitis respectively, However, a critical compari son of incidence and prevalence studies published from 1976 until 1994 clearly showed no pre-existing nutritional abnormality that has been identified consistently in patients who develop inflammatory bowel dis ease.