Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 21, 2015; 21(31): 9239-9244
Published online Aug 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i31.9239
Oral Campylobacter species: Initiators of a subgroup of inflammatory bowel disease?
Li Zhang
Li Zhang, School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Author contributions: Zhang L solely contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author has no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Li Zhang, MBBS, PhD, Senior Lecturer (Medical Microbiology and Immunology), School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, High St, Kensington, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. l.zhang@unsw.edu.au
Telephone: +61-1-93852042 Fax: +61-2-93851483
Received: March 15, 2015
Peer-review started: March 16, 2015
First decision: April 23, 2015
Revised: May 8, 2015
Accepted: July 3, 2015
Article in press: July 3, 2015
Published online: August 21, 2015
Processing time: 157 Days and 23.3 Hours
Abstract

In recent years, a number of studies detected a significantly higher prevalence of Campylobacter species such as Campylobacter concisus (C. concisus) in intestinal biopsies and fecal samples collected from patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) compared to controls. Most of these Campylobacter species are not of zoonotic origin but are human oral Campylobacter species. Bacterial species usually cause diseases in the location where they colonize. However, C. concisus and other oral Campylobacter species are associated with IBD occurring at the lower parts of the gastrointestinal tract, suggesting that these Campylobacter species may have unique virulence factors that are expressed in the lower parts of the gastrointestinal tract.

Keywords: Campylobacter concisus; Oral Campylobacter species; Inflammatory bowel disease; Crohn’s disease; Ulcerative colitis

Core tip: The human oral cavity is a reservoir of a number of Campylobacter species. Accumulated evidence suggests that some oral Campylobacter species such as Campylobacter concisus may be initiators of a subgroup of human inflammatory bowel disease.