Nutrition in Clinical Practice

 

Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Clarke, J. O.
Right arrow Articles by Mullin, G. E.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Clarke, J. O.
Right arrow Articles by Mullin, G. E.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?
Nutrition in Clinical Practice, Vol. 23, No. 1, 49-62 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/011542650802300149
© 2008 The American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition

Invited Review

A Review of Complementary and Alternative Approaches to Immunomodulation

John O. Clarke, MD and Gerard E. Mullin, MD

Division of Gastroenterology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland

Correspondence: Gerard E. Mullin, MD, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Division of Gastroenterology, 600 North Wolfe Street, Carnegie Building, Room 464, Baltimore, MD 21287. Electronic mail may be sent to gmullin1{at}jhmi.edu.

Current Western therapies for inflammatory diseases are suboptimal; increasingly, patients are turning to complementary and alternative medicine for symptom relief and improved quality of life. There is emerging evidence that many of these therapies have the ability to modulate the immune system and disrupt the proinflammatory cascade through a variety of mechanisms, including antioxidant effects, alterations in cell signaling (in particular the nuclear factor (NF)-{kappa}B pathway), cytokines, proinflammatory mediators, and disruption of bacterial flora. Using inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) as a model of inflammation, we explore the principal complementary and alternative medicine treatments that show promise in this regard, namely, resveratrol, green tea, curcumin, boswellia, fish oil, vitamin D, and probiotics. With each agent, we detail the mechanisms that have been described with regard to immune modulation, discuss the medical conditions for which it has been evaluated, and explore the data to date for the prevention or treatment of IBD.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?