Harmonizing Nutritional Therapies for Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Uses of nutritional therapies for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are of tremendous interest to the lay and professional communities. This interest currently outweighs the scientific basis for deciding on a particular therapy for any given patient. Some nutritional therapies have credible reports, in peer-review journals, validating their use for some patients. The broad pediatric gastroenterology community in the United States has, however, been unable or unwilling to agree on the details necessary to disseminate the most effective therapies with adequate reliability and validity to implement these interventions successfully. The well-established importance of the appropriate use of nutritional interventions for the treatment of undernutrition and maintenance of optimal nutrition is not an issue. A consensus and widely applicable solution for nutrition as therapy for IBD is, however, not imminent. In the interim, we aim to help the science-based reader to evaluate manuscripts appearing in our journals and to use this information to make rational, informed therapeutic decisions. We outline the current limited evidence base and make recommendations to advance the field of nutritional therapy in IBD.