[Inflammatory bowel disease: importance of nutrition today]

Malnutrition is a very common situation in patients inflammatory with intestinal disease (IID), which can be caused by a multitude of factors. It has been shown that nutritional support not only improves the nutritional condition of the patients, but in Crohn's disease it also has an effect on the activity of the disease, although this effect is smaller than that of steroids. Elemental diets are no more efficient than polymeric diets except under very special circumstances, but they are more expensive and patients tolerate them worse. A digestive pause is not recommended unless there is an absolute contraindication for the use of the digestive tract. Therefore, parenteral nutrition, which is more expensive and can cause serious complications, will be reserved for very specific indications. The use of fish oil supplements, either because it competes with arachidonic acid and prevents the initiation of the inflammatory cascade, or because it decreases the production of cytokines, has shown to be potentially useful in inflammatory intestinal disease, and this must be confirmed by further studies. Short chain fatty acids enemas have shown promising results in distal ulcerative colitis but the lack of homogeneity in the studies makes it necessary for these results to be consolidated in new studies. Nutritional support is especially interesting in children with inflammatory intestinal disease given that the growth retardation which is often seen in severe cases, can be controlled by adequate enteral or parenteral diets.