Gastroenterology Special Issue confirms: You are what you eat

Patients are always interested in understanding what they should eat and how it will impact their health. Physicians are just as interested in advancing their understanding of the major health effects of foods and food-related diseases. To satisfy this need, the editors of Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association, are pleased to announce the publication of this year's highly anticipated special 13th issue on food, the immune system and the gastrointestinal tract.

"This special issue provides a tour de force of biological and clinical data regarding how food impacts health and disease," said Douglas A. Corley, MD, PhD, MPH, and Detlef Schuppan, MD, PhD, guest editors for this special issue. "We hope this will inform future research by identifying gaps in knowledge, while providing patients and clinicians with evidence-based summaries to guide clinical recommendations."

In the last two decades, we have witnessed a marked expansion of research into how food and nutritional elements influence health and disease. Food and its interactions with the immune system are a critical topic for gastroenterology to address, changing our view of digestion and resorption of food as the principal role of the gastrointestinal tract. Articles in this special issue of Gastroenterology evaluate immunology, biological mechanisms and clinical studies of foods and food-related diseases for all the major topic areas, including food allergies, celiac disease, non-celiac wheat sensitivity, carbohydrate (FODMAP) intolerance in relation to irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, obesity and brain-gut interactions.