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Understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us?
Gut function remains largely underinvestigated in undernutrition, despite its critical role in essential nutrient digestion, absorption and assimilation. In areas of high enteropathogen burden, alterations in gut barrier function and subsequent inflammatory effects are observable but remain poorly c...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292602/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34103403 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2020-323609 |
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author | Thompson, Alex J Bourke, Claire D Robertson, Ruairi C Shivakumar, Nirupama Edwards, Christine A Preston, Tom Holmes, Elaine Kelly, Paul Frost, Gary Morrison, Douglas J |
author_facet | Thompson, Alex J Bourke, Claire D Robertson, Ruairi C Shivakumar, Nirupama Edwards, Christine A Preston, Tom Holmes, Elaine Kelly, Paul Frost, Gary Morrison, Douglas J |
author_sort | Thompson, Alex J |
collection | PubMed |
description | Gut function remains largely underinvestigated in undernutrition, despite its critical role in essential nutrient digestion, absorption and assimilation. In areas of high enteropathogen burden, alterations in gut barrier function and subsequent inflammatory effects are observable but remain poorly characterised. Environmental enteropathy (EE)—a condition that affects both gut morphology and function and is characterised by blunted villi, inflammation and increased permeability—is thought to play a role in impaired linear growth (stunting) and severe acute malnutrition. However, the lack of tools to quantitatively characterise gut functional capacity has hampered both our understanding of gut pathogenesis in undernutrition and evaluation of gut-targeted therapies to accelerate nutritional recovery. Here we survey the technology landscape for potential solutions to improve assessment of gut function, focussing on devices that could be deployed at point-of-care in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We assess the potential for technological innovation to assess gut morphology, function, barrier integrity and immune response in undernutrition, and highlight the approaches that are currently most suitable for deployment and development. This article focuses on EE and undernutrition in LMICs, but many of these technologies may also become useful in monitoring of other gut pathologies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8292602 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82926022021-08-05 Understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us? Thompson, Alex J Bourke, Claire D Robertson, Ruairi C Shivakumar, Nirupama Edwards, Christine A Preston, Tom Holmes, Elaine Kelly, Paul Frost, Gary Morrison, Douglas J Gut Recent Advances in Clinical Practice Gut function remains largely underinvestigated in undernutrition, despite its critical role in essential nutrient digestion, absorption and assimilation. In areas of high enteropathogen burden, alterations in gut barrier function and subsequent inflammatory effects are observable but remain poorly characterised. Environmental enteropathy (EE)—a condition that affects both gut morphology and function and is characterised by blunted villi, inflammation and increased permeability—is thought to play a role in impaired linear growth (stunting) and severe acute malnutrition. However, the lack of tools to quantitatively characterise gut functional capacity has hampered both our understanding of gut pathogenesis in undernutrition and evaluation of gut-targeted therapies to accelerate nutritional recovery. Here we survey the technology landscape for potential solutions to improve assessment of gut function, focussing on devices that could be deployed at point-of-care in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We assess the potential for technological innovation to assess gut morphology, function, barrier integrity and immune response in undernutrition, and highlight the approaches that are currently most suitable for deployment and development. This article focuses on EE and undernutrition in LMICs, but many of these technologies may also become useful in monitoring of other gut pathologies. BMJ Publishing Group 2021-08 2021-06-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8292602/ /pubmed/34103403 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2020-323609 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Recent Advances in Clinical Practice Thompson, Alex J Bourke, Claire D Robertson, Ruairi C Shivakumar, Nirupama Edwards, Christine A Preston, Tom Holmes, Elaine Kelly, Paul Frost, Gary Morrison, Douglas J Understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us? |
title | Understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us? |
title_full | Understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us? |
title_fullStr | Understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us? |
title_full_unstemmed | Understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us? |
title_short | Understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us? |
title_sort | understanding the role of the gut in undernutrition: what can technology tell us? |
topic | Recent Advances in Clinical Practice |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292602/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34103403 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2020-323609 |
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