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A Review of Complementary and Alternative Approaches to ImmunomodulationDivision of Gastroenterology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland Correspondence: 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)-
Nutrition in Clinical Practice, Vol. 23, No. 1,
49-62 (2008) This article has been cited by other articles:
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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. 
