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: The aim of this study was to review the literature of the last 10 years to photograph pre-clinical and clinical data on the use of nutraceuticals in the prevention and treatment, also combined with the conventional drugs, of IBD. Method: PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science and ClinicalTrials.gov were used for searching the most recent publications on in vitro, in vivo and clinical evidences on IBD and nutraceuticals by assessing the originality and scientific rigor of 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 on 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 preclinical studies, many of them are mostly aimed at resolving diseases related to IBD rather than IBD itself. Conclusion: Despite the promising preclinical 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.