Role of glucagon-like peptides in inflammatory bowel diseases-current knowledge and future perspectives

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are chronic, relapsing, intestinal inflammatory disorders with complex and yet unrevealed pathogenesis in which genetic, immunological, and environmental factors play a role. Nowadays, a higher proportion of elderly IBD patients with coexisting conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and/or diabetes is recorded, who require more complex treatment and became a great challenge for gastroenterologists. Furthermore, some patients do not respond to anti-IBD therapy. These facts, together with increasing comorbidities in patients with IBD, imply that urgent, more complex, novel therapeutic strategies in the treatment are needed. Glucagon-like peptides (GLPs) possess numerous functions in the human body such as lowering blood glucose level, controlling body weight, inhibiting gastric emptying, reducing food ingestion, increasing crypt cell proliferation, and improving intestinal growth and nutrient absorption. Thus, GLPs and dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV) inhibitors have recently gained attention in IBD research. Several animal models showed that treatment with GLPs may lead to improvement of colitis. This review presents data on the multitude effects of GLPs in the inflammatory intestinal diseases and summarizes the current knowledge on GLPs, which have the potential to become a novel therapeutic option in IBD therapy.