COMMENTARY
Crohn's disease
Probiotics for Crohn’s disease: what have we learned?
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr C Prantera
Division of Gastroenterology, Azienda Ospedaliera S Camillo-Forlanini, 00149 Roma, Italia; prantera@tin.it
Probiotics do not seem to be a therapeutic option for patients with Crohn’s disease, either in the acute phase or for maintenance
Keywords: Crohn’s disease; randomised controlled trial; probiotics; lactobacillus
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A causative role of bacteria in Crohn’s disease (CD) has been surmised for a long time. Only in recent years however has there been a large body of evidence from genetic and bacteriological studies indicating that the intestinal flora is the essential factor in driving the Crohn’s inflammatory process in genetically susceptible individuals.1–5
The therapeutic arsenal for treating CD assumes the correctness of the above hypothesis. Thus immunosuppressors are used to reduce the host response and antibiotics are used to suppress the bacterial flora, with a consequent decreased activation of the gut immune system.6 Between the two strategies it should theoretically be better to remove the harmful cause instead of reducing the host defences by inducing a form of immunodeficiency that is susceptible to opportunistic infections.
If the intervention on the gut flora works, substituting antibiotics (which are heavily burdened by side effects) with probiotics is an appealing
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Gut 2006 55: 842-847.[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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