Working to Answer the Effectiveness of Nutrition in IBD: Still a Ways to Go

The Specific Carbohydrate diet (SCD) is an exclusion diet widely popular among patients with IBD, which restricts carbohydrates and processed foods. Two recently concluded controlled studies PRODUCE (Personalized Research on Diet in Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Crohn's Disease) and DINE-CD (The Diet to Induce Remission in Crohn's disease) confirm efficacy of SCD on symptom control but fail to demonstrate a sustained anti-inflammatory response. These dietary studies are a welcome addition to a poorly understood field of dietary management of IBD, we explore some practical challenges including trial designs, recruitment, and retention in long term dietary intervention studies. Future dietary intervention studies should, therefore, incorporate endoscopic end points to establish a true anti-inflammatory response to elimination diets, preferably with detailed multi-omics analysis to understand mechanism of action.