Dietary and enteral interventions for Crohn's disease

•Among various dietary interventions/supplements, none has shown obvious efficacy.•The efficacy of enteral nutrition is inferior to steroids in adult Crohn's disease.•Enteral nutrition may be useful for maintenance of remission in Crohn's disease.•Large RCTs are needed to assess the efficacy of dietary/enteral interventions.

It is now widely acknowledged that the intestinal bacterial flora together with genetic predisposing factors significantly contribute to the immunopathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) as reflected by mucosal immune dysregulation. Recently, there has been an increased interest in nutraceutical therapies, including probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics. Other dietary interventions with low carbohydrate diet, omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and glutamine have been attempted to downregulate the gut inflammatory response and thereby alleviate gastrointestinal symptoms. Enteral nutrition has been widely used as induction and maintenance therapies in the management of Crohn's disease (CD). In this review, a critical assessment of the results of clinical trial outcomes and meta-analyses was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of dietary and enteral interventions for CD.

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