Mediators of Inflammation and Immune Responses in the Human Gastrointestinal Tract

Abstract

The gastrointestinal tract is continuously exposed to foreign antigens—mainly derived from the commensal microbiota and food antigens—but occasionally to those derived from invading bacteria, viruses, and tumoral antigens. Therefore, the immune system of the gut has a unique capacity to balance the mechanisms of tolerance in health and those creating a proper defensive immune response in disease. Changes in such delicate balance are usually linked to the development of gastrointestinal pathology. Despite its central role in human health and disease, most of the current knowledge of mucosal immunology of the gastrointestinal tract is mainly obtained from experimental murine models. Although the mechanisms of intestinal immunity in mouse and human have similar output, the specific pathways through which they are elicited are different [1, 2]. It is essential to fill in this gap in our current knowledge of the human immune system of the gastrointestinal tract in order to understand the pathogenesis and be able to design rational therapies to manage acute and chronic inflammatory gastrointestinal disease. In this special issue, we aimed to gain depth into the current understanding of immune processes in the human gastrointestinal tract in health and disease by selecting work in progress of active investigators in the field.