Citation
Yang, Yunsheng; Owyang, Chung; Wu, Gary D., and [; Penny Gordon-Larsen, Member; & ] (2016). East Meets West: The Increasing Incidence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Asia as a Paradigm for Environmental Effects on the Pathogenesis of Immune-Mediated Disease. Gastroenterology, 151(6), e1-5. PMCID: PMC5439349Abstract
Many diseases have increased dramatically in incidence over the past few decades in parallel with global industrialization. Diseases such as asthma, eosinophilic esophagitis and other atopic diseases, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), to name a few, have become much more prevalent over the past 60 years beginning in Western societies, followed by Asian countries such as Japan and Korea, and now involving China and India. Using IBD as an example of a multifactorial disease with genetic and environmental elements involved in disease pathogenesis, it is clear that environmental factors are predominately responsible for the increasing incidence of these diseases. However, the exact nature of these environmental factors remains ill-defined. Given the fundamental role that the intestinal microbiota plays in immune regulation and the pathogenesis of IBD, it is reasonable to speculate that microbial and dietary alterations may be playing a central role in rising IBD prevalence. On April 7, 2016, the Chinese Society of Gastroenterology and the American Gastroenterological Association jointly sponsored a symposium in which experts from a diverse spectrum of disciplines met to compare and contrast Asian versus Western aspects of epidemiology and clinical phenotypes, as well as genetic and environmental factors as a first step toward understanding the factors that may be playing a role in the increasing incidence of IBD in Asia.URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2016.10.034Reference Type
Journal ArticleYear Published
2016Journal Title
GastroenterologyAuthor(s)
Yang, YunshengOwyang, Chung
Wu, Gary D., and [
Penny Gordon-Larsen, Member
]