Diet and Microbiota in Health and Disease

David Shen gives an overview of the role of diet and microbiota on health and disease. The development of a stable and diverse gut microbiota is essential to various host physiologic functions such as immunoregulation, pathogen prevention and metabolism, and leads to good health, whereas a dysbiotic gut microbiota is altered in structure and mucosal immune dysregulation, such as inflammatory bowel disease. The dysbiotic gut microbiota and diet contribute to its pathogenesis. Reversal of dysbiosis through fecal microbiota transplantation may provide benefit in the treatment of ulcerative colitis.