ABSTRACT

This chapter will discuss Crohn’s disease (CD) and the role of probiotics and prebiotics in the treatment of it. Before we can discuss whether probiotics and prebiotics work in CD, we need to understand what CD is, and why probiotics or prebiotics may have a potential impact on the disease course. This introduction about the disease and its pathogenesis is neither exhaustive nor is meant to be the focus of this chapter (readers are referred to excellent reviews elsewhere for that), but should merely serve as the backdrop as CD relates to this topic. Secondly, we will discuss some of the potential mechanisms by which probiotics and prebiotics could affect CD pathogenesis. We will focus our attention on the clinical work done with prebiotics and probiotics and their results, and draw conclusions about the design of future work in this regard.