Publications

2024

• Food-Related Behavioral Patterns in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: The Role of Food Involvement and Health Engagement
  Lorenzo Palamenghi, Dilara Usta, Salvo Leone and Guendalina Graffigna
  Nutrients
  doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16081185

  Nutrition has been acknowledged as crucial in IBD and is relevant to patients’ motives behind food choices, which are affected by health engagement (HE) and food involvement (FI). This study aimed to profile IBD patients according to their levels of health engagement and food involvement to identify patterns of different motives behind food choices, particularly regarding the use of food to regulate mood. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 890 Italian IBD patients who completed an online survey in April 2021. The authors measured health engagement, food involvement, motives behind food choices, emotional states, and food-related quality of life (Fr-QoL). K-means cluster analysis was performed to identify participants with similar levels of health engagement and food involvement. Four clusters were identified: “Health-conscious (high HE, low FI)”, “Balanced (high HE, high FI)”, “Hedonist (high FI, low HE)”, and “Careless (low FI, low HE)”. Clusters with high FI are inclined toward seeking pleasurable food, but when supported with high health engagement, individuals were less prone to use food to manage mood. Groups with higher health engagement demonstrated lower hospitalisation rates and relapses and better Fr-QoL. Profiling IBD patients regarding FI and HE could aid clinicians in identifying individuals at greater risk of maladaptive food-related behaviours.

• Mucosal host-microbe interactions associate with clinical phenotypes in inflammatory bowel disease
  Shixian Hu, Arno R. Bourgonje, Ranko Gacesa, Bernadien H. Jansen, Johannes R. Björk, Amber Bangma, Iwan J. Hidding, Hendrik M. van Dullemen, Marijn C. Visschedijk, Klaas Nico Faber, Gerard Dijkstra, Hermie J. M. Harmsen, Eleonora A. M. Festen, Arnau Vich Vila, Lieke M. Spekhorst & Rinse K. Weersma
  Nature Communications
  doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45855-2

  Disrupted host-microbe interactions at the mucosal level are key to the pathophysiology of IBD. This study aimed to comprehensively examine crosstalk between mucosal gene expression and microbiota in patients with IBD. To study tissue-specific interactions, we perform transcriptomic (RNA-seq) and microbial (16S-rRNA-seq) profiling of 697 intestinal biopsies (645 derived from 335 patients with IBD and 52 from 16 non-IBD controls).