EDITORIAL
Inflammatory bowel disease
Does innate immune response defect underlie inflammatory bowel disease in the Asian population?
Gastrointestinal Section, Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor S Ghosh
Gastrointestinal Section, Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospital, Du Cane Road, London W12 0NN, UK; s.ghosh@imperial.ac.uk
Lifestyle rather than key genetic defects might be responsible for the defective innate immune response in Asians with inflammatory bowel disease.
Abbreviations: IBD, inflammatory bowel disease; CD, Crohn’s disease; TLR, toll-like receptor; UC, ulcerative colitis
Keywords: inflammatory bowel disease; genetics; immune response
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The normal intestine encounters a high concentration of foreign antigen, bacteria, and food, across a large surface area that approximates to that of a tennis court. Despite the fact that this antigenic load is separated from the largest complement of lymphocytes in the body (gut associated lymphoid tissue, GALT) by only a single layer of polarised intestinal epithelium, most people do not mount an immune response to foreign antigens. The mucosal immune system has evolved to balance the need to respond to pathogens while maintaining active tolerance to commensal bacteria and food antigens. In inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), this tolerance breaks down and inflammation supervenes driven by the intestinal microbial flora. Tolerance is based both on the protection offered by the evolutionary conserved innate immune response that is non-antigen specific and the antigen specific adaptive immune response that develops upon antigen exposure. Current key targeted therapeutic strategies
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This article has been cited by other articles:
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McLEMORE, L. J.
(2007). Inflammatory Bowel Disease. radtech
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