Volume 16 Issue 1, January 2019

Innovative solutions are needed to overcome the global disparity in patients awaiting kidney transplantation versus donor organs available. A new study reports a promising new strategy of transplanting kidneys from HCV-infected donors into HCV-uninfected recipients and treating their HCV with direct-acting antivirals post-transplant — recipients achieved HCV cure with excellent one-year kidney allograft function.

In this Review, the authors discuss how the gut microbiota might incite food sensitivity. They focus on direct and indirect mechanisms involving microorganisms and how increased understanding of these mechanisms will help the development of therapeutic strategies for food sensitivities.

The intestinal epithelium undergoes constant replenishment, fuelled by continuously dividing stem cells residing in crypts. In this Review, Gehart and Clevers discuss the signals, cell types and mechanisms that control intestinal stem cell homeostasis and explore how imbalance in key signalling pathways can cause disease.

Current nutritional approaches to prevent and treat various diseases have limited effectiveness. Here, Zmora et al. review the major principles underlying effects of dietary constituents on the gut microbiota, resolving aspects of the diet–microbiota–host crosstalk, and present the promises and challenges of incorporating microbiome data into dietary planning.

Liver diseases exert a substantial disease burden across the Asia–Pacific region. In this Review, the authors explore the epidemiological trends in the most common liver diseases in the region, including HBV infection, HCV infection and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and discuss implications for preventive measures.