Signposts to therapy: recent advances in inflammatory bowel disease research.

Research on ulcerative colitis and Crohn disease, the two conditions grouped under the heading of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), is improving our understanding of how the intestine functions at the cellular level in health and disease. Researchers in the McGill Inflammatory Bowel Disease Research Program are studying the factors that affect the transport of nutrients, salt and water across cell membranes in the intestinal epithelium and investigating the cellular mechanisms of diarrhea. Their main interest is in how the intestine adapts in response to inflammation. Their findings promise to yield new targets for the pharmacologic and dietary management of IBD.