Actis GC, Pellicano R, Rosina F. Inflammatory bowel disease: Traditional knowledge holds the seeds for the future. World J Gastrointest Pharmacol Ther 2015; 6(2): 10-16 [PMID: 25949845 DOI: 10.4292/wjgpt.v6.i2.10]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Giovanni C Actis, MD, Hepatogastroenterology Division, Ospedale Gradenigo, Corso Regina Margherita, 8, 10153 Torino, Italy. segreteria.gel@h-gradenigo.it
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Editorial
Open-Access Policy of This Article
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/
World J Gastrointest Pharmacol Ther. May 6, 2015; 6(2): 10-16 Published online May 6, 2015. doi: 10.4292/wjgpt.v6.i2.10
Inflammatory bowel disease: Traditional knowledge holds the seeds for the future
Giovanni C Actis, Rinaldo Pellicano, Floriano Rosina
Giovanni C Actis, Floriano Rosina, Hepatogastroenterology Division, Ospedale Gradenigo, 10153 Torino, Italy
Rinaldo Pellicano, Division of Gastroenterology, Ospedale Molinette, 10126 Torino, Italy
Author contributions: All authors contributed to this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: We hereby denie any conflict of interest with regard to the present paper.
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: Giovanni C Actis, MD, Hepatogastroenterology Division, Ospedale Gradenigo, Corso Regina Margherita, 8, 10153 Torino, Italy. segreteria.gel@h-gradenigo.it
Telephone: +39-011-8151211 Fax: +39-011-8151388
Received: January 16, 2015 Peer-review started: January 18, 2015 First decision: February 7, 2015 Revised: March 2, 2015 Accepted: April 1, 2015 Article in press: April 7, 2015 Published online: May 6, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: The inflammatory diseases of the gut (inflammatory bowel disease) continue to both constitute a medical challenge, and a formidable intellectual stimulus. The latter statement is based on the accumulating evidence that the IBDS are indeed syndromes whereby a few poorly penetrating polymorphic genes can affect at once the inflammatory balance in the barrier systems of the gut, the skin, and the airways. The former statement reflects the very fact that, though described in the 19th century, IBD continues to defeat our struggle to cure it, invading yet the hitherto unaffected landscapes of the Eastern World, almost as it was a response to our efforts. We deem that the address of the initiating factors, rather than the downstream phenomena, may be a strategy to wriggle out of the hold-up. The description of interventions such as appendectomy or microbiome replacement, among other options, witnesses our own way to interpret this need in the present editorial.
