Effect of Food Allergy on Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Objective: To study the effect of food allergy (FA) on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in mice, and provide new scientific insights for people to understand the effect of food allergy on IBD and the correlation between them. Methods: Adult female BALB/c mice were divided into control group, IBD group and FA-IBD group. Firstly, MC903 and ovalbumin were applied together to establish a food allergy model. The occurrence of food allergy was evaluated by clinical allergy score, temperature change, serum specific antibodies and mast cell protease concentration in mice. After the establishment of the food allergy model, the inflammatory bowel disease model was established by drinking 3% dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) for 7 consecutive days. The changes of IBD intestinal tissue were identified by mouse weight, disease activity index, colon length, intestinal histology and related gene expression. Results: Compared with control group and IBD group, the body temperature of FA-IBD group mice decreased significantly (P<0.001), the clinical allergy score (P<0.0001, P<0.001), and the levels of IgE (P<0.0001) and MCPT-1 (P<0.0001) in serum increased significantly, indicating the success of food allergy model construction. After the construction of inflammatory bowel disease, compared with the IBD group, the disease activity index of the FA-IBD group increased slowly, the degree of colon shortening decreased significantly (P<0.01), the intestinal injury was reduced, the IL-6, IL-1β, IFN-γ and TGF-β in the colon showed a downward trend, and the expression levels of tight junction protein MUC-2, OCLN, ZO-1 and other genes showed an upward trend. Conclusion: Exposure to food allergens alleviated intestinal inflammation and intestinal barrier damage caused by inflammatory bowel disease to a certain extent, thereby alleviating intestinal symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease.