<b><i>Inflammatory Intestinal Diseases</i></b> - The Second Issue: ‘Mucosal Inflammation'

As the first issue, the second issue of Inflammatory Intestinal Diseases , entitled ‘Mucosal inflammation’, contains articles mainly prepared by two authors from East and West. They have provided outstanding review articles bringing to you the most current information from a somewhat unusual perspective. Articles in this issue include ‘The role of T-cell subsets during chronic inflammation in disease, IBD and microscopic colitis patients: more common mechanisms or more differences?’, ‘Eosinophilic esophagitis, eosinophilic gastroenteritis and eosinophilic colitis: common mechanisms and differences between East and West’, ‘The innate immune system: a trigger for many chronic inflammatory intestinal diseases?’, ‘The same intestinal inflammatory disease despite different genetic risk factors in East and West?’ and ‘The role of the immune system in the pathophysiology and drug therapy of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD)’. It is easily visible that we again followed our integrative concept: what common mechanisms exist in different diseases associated with mucosal inflammation? Could they be a drug target? Are the mechanisms the same in the West and East? and if not, what could that mean for treatment? These questions will be most relevant to identify further common pathophysiological pathways. Genome-wide association studies in recent years have shown us that the many genetic polymorphisms, such as PTPN2 , PTPN22 or NOD2 , are associated with a number of different inflammatory diseases. We need to reflect this ‘promiscuity’ of the genetic risk factors much better by our scientific approaches to better understand mucosal inflammation. We sincerely hope that the second issue of Inflammatory Intestinal Diseases can contribute to adapt our scientific approaches to the outlined situation and further will stimulate the exchange and collaborations between scientists and clinicians in the East and West. Prof. Gerhard Rogler, Zurich Prof. Toshifumi Hibi, Tokyo Published online: June 3, 2016