New Insight and Knowledge on anti-inflammatory Effectiveness of dietary phenolics: the NIKE Project

The NIKE project is targeted to evaluate the impact of dietary phenolics’ intake on the maintenance of remission in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The project is particularly focused on a (poly)phenolic subclass, namely ellagitannins (ETs), mainly found in some fruits and nuts, like berries, pomegranate, and walnuts. Differently from common approach, the dietary intervention will be conducted at the beginning of the project. As first step, the in vivo metabolites and their concentration in the bloodstream - after consumption of the ET-rich food - will be assessed. A commercially available pomegranate juice will be used because its great richness in ETs. Volunteers suffering of asymptomatic IBD with high risk of clinical flare will be recruited at the St. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital (Bologna, Italy). The level of faecal calprotectin will be used as surrogate marker of the intestinal inflammation [1]. As second step, ET metabolites found in blood will be used for supplementation in two cell model systems (intestinal and immune cells), at concentration comparable to the in vivo ones, to unravel the mechanism/s of anti-inflammatory action. Signalling pathways potentially affected by ET metabolites in inflammatory conditions will be studied. In the third step, data obtained in cell cultures will be verified ex-vivo in tissue samples (intestinal biopsies and plasma) obtained during the intervention study. To our knowledge, NIKE will be the first project investigating the putative protective effects of these compounds toward inflammation and consequent IBD relapse in humans. At present only one study has investigated the anti-inflammatory effects of ETs related to IBD in rats [2]. The integral analysis of all results obtained in the project will elucidate the role of ET-rich foods in the secondary prevention of IBD, deepening the existing knowledge on their mechanism/s of action at the molecular, metabolic, and genomic levels. Acknowledgments. This study was funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research MIUR - SIR Programme no. RBSI14LHMB funded to F.D. References. 1) Konikoff & Denson, Inflamm Bowel Dis 2006; 12:524-34. 2) Rosillo et al, Pharmacol Res 2012; 66:235-42.