The impact of nutrition on systemic and intestinal immune responses remains controversially discussed and yet not fully understood. The majority of studies investigating the effects of dietary antigens focused to understand how local and systemic unresponsiveness is induced by innocuous food antigens. Moreover, it has been shown that both, microbial and dietary antigens are essential for the normal development of the mucosal immune system. Based on experimental findings from animals and IBD patients, we propose a model how the intestinal immune system performs the balancing act between recognition and tolerance of dietary antigens at the same time: In the healthy gut, repetitive uptake of dietary antigens by Peyer’s patches leads to increasing activation of CD4⁺ T cells till hyper-activated lymphocytes undergo apoptosis. In contrast to healthy controls, this mechanism was disturbed in Crohn’s disease patients. This observation might help to better understand beneficial effects of dietary intervention therapy.

营养对全身和肠道免疫反应的影响仍存在争议，但尚未完全了解。大多数研究膳食抗原影响的研究都集中于了解无害食品抗原如何引起局部和全身无反应性。此外，已经表明，微生物和饮食抗原对于粘膜免疫系统的正常发育都是必不可少的。基于动物和IBD患者的实验结果，我们提出了一个模型，该模型说明肠道免疫系统如何同时执行膳食抗原的识别和耐受之间的平衡作用：在健康的肠道中，派伊尔斑块重复摄取膳食抗原会导致增加CD4 ^+的激活T细胞直至过度活化的淋巴细胞发生凋亡。与健康对照相比，该机制在克罗恩病患者中受到干扰。该观察结果可能有助于更好地了解饮食干预治疗的有益作用。