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As pregnancies frequently occur in patients with IBD, and given that TNF inhibitors are increasingly being used for treatment of this chronic intestinal disease, the discontinuation of biologic agents during the third trimester in patients with quiescent disease has been advocated owing to safety concerns.
Ciclosporin and infliximab are used as rescue therapies for the treatment of severe steroid-refractory ulcerative colitis. Now, an open-label, head-to-head randomized controlled trial has demonstrated that these drugs are well-tolerated and have equivalent efficacy in inducing short-term clinical response, mucosal healing and decreasing colectomy rates at 3 months.
Richard Guerrant and colleagues discuss the growing evidence that vicious cycles of early childhood enteric infections and malnutrition are associated with obesity and its comorbidities in later life, forming a triple burden of poverty. The potential mechanisms and interventions that must be understood and applied to prevent this loss of human potential are also presented.
The enteric nervous system (ENS) arises from neural crest-derived cells. Here, Heather Young and colleagues provide an overview of the progress made in the past five years in our understanding of ENS development and the potential involvement of defects in ENS development in paediatric motility disorders.
Ischaemia–reperfusion injury (IRI) in the liver is a major complication of transplantation. This Review outlines our current understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie liver IRI and summarizes the latest progress in large animal models and clinical trials of liver IRI.
Treatment of recurrent Clostridium difficile infection is challenging. New research now replicates human disease in a mouse model, shedding light on why antibiotics often fail to prevent further recurrences and demonstrating that targeted manipulation of the gut microbiota could be a feasible treatment option.