Vaios Svolos

University of Glasgow | UofG · Human Nutrition Section

This study aimed to provide evidence on whether children at risk of gastrointestinal inflammation have increased measurements of faecal calprotectin (FC). Faecal calprotectin was measured in 232 children; 55 children (n = 11 treatment naïve) with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), 63 with coeliac disease (CD); 17 with new diagnosis before and aft...

Background Diet is strongly associated with the aetiology of Crohn’s Disease (CD) and exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) is the primary induction treatment in paediatric CD. This study explored opinions around the use of EEN and alternative novel, solid food-based diets (SFDs) expressed by paediatric patients with CD, previously treated with EEN and...

With an unprecedented growth in the biomedical literature, keeping up to date with the new developments presents an immense challenge. Publications are often studied in isolation of the established literature, with interpretation being subjective and often introducing human bias. With ontology-driven annotation of biomedical data gaining popularity...

Background & aims: Exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) is the only established dietary treatment for Crohn's disease (CD), but its acceptability is limited. There is a need for novel dietary treatments for CD. Methods: We evaluated the effects of an individualized food-based diet (CD-TREAT), with similar composition to EEN, on the gut microbiome,...

Background Exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) is an effective treatment for Crohn's disease. Aims To investigate the hypothesis that ingredients of EEN formulas are unlikely to initiate a disease flare and that their dietary elimination is not essential for disease amelioration. Methods We performed compositional analysis of EEN formulas with evid...

Background: Phytic acid is abundant in plant-based diets and acts as a micronutrient inhibitor for humans and non-ruminant animals. Phytases are enzymes that break down phytic acid, releasing micronutrients and enhancing their bioavailability, particularly iron and zinc. Deficiencies in iron and zinc are significant public health problems, especial...

Background: Phytic acid is abundant in plant-based diets and acts as a micronutrient inhibitor for humans and non-ruminant animals. Phytases are enzymes that break down phytic acid, releasing micronutrients and enhancing their bioavailability, particularly iron and zinc. Deficiencies in iron and zinc are significant public health problems, especial...

Background Ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune reaction to imbalanced colonic microbiome in genetically predisposed patients. There have been four published randomised controlled trials of faecal microbiota transplant versus placebo in ulcerative colitis; three being positive. However, the methodology used varied and mechanistic data were sparse....

Background The immunological effects of treatment with exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) in Crohn’s disease (CD) remain unknown. We characterized the plasma levels of inflammation-related proteins (IRPs) in children with CD and ulcerative colitis (UC) compared with noninflammatory controls (non-IBD) and explored the effect of EEN in CD. Methods Ni...

Purpose of review This article provides a literature update on original articles published in the past 18 months (May 2022–November 2023) in the dietary management of paediatric Crohn's disease. Recent findings There is more data to support the use of exclusive enteral nutrition in the management of active Crohn's disease in children. Several food...

Background Predicting response to exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) in active Crohn’s disease (CD) could lead to therapy personalization and pretreatment optimization. Objectives This study aimed to explore the ability of pretreatment parameters to predict fecal calprotectin (FCal) levels at EEN completion in a prospective study in children with C...

Background Despite substantial evidence implicating diet in the development and management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), we still lack widely agreeable recommendations for dietary therapy. As a result, patients often self-manage their disease symptoms following a range of dietary regimes, including elimination diets and specific nutrient sup...

Diet is a modifiable risk factor for disease course and data over the past decade have emerged to indicate its role in Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). However, literature is riddled with misinterpretation of data, often leading to unexpected or conflicting results. The key understanding is that causative factors in disease develop...

Background: A significant body of literature has interrogated the critical role of diet in the development and management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Summary: This review provides a summary and critical appraisal of literature in this area, focusing on four distinct themes: nutritional epidemiology, animal and in vitro experiments, enteral...

Background Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) often use the Internet to seek information beyond that received from healthcare professionals. This study assessed the perceptions of YouTube presenters on the role of diet in the management of IBD. Methods Videos discussing dietary aspects (food, diet-related items, and advisory comments [...

Background and aims: Treatment adherence is key to the efficacy of exclusive enteral nutrition (100% EN) in active Crohn's disease (CD), but there are no biomarkers to objectively estimate this. We explored faecal parameters as biomarkers of compliance with 100% EN, and subsequently developed and validated the Glasgow Exclusive Enteral Nutrition I...

Background Predicting response to treatment with exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) in paediatric Crohn’s disease (CD) can lead to more personalised, cost-effective, and efficacious therapy. We explored the ability of pre-treatment clinical and multi-omics parameters to predict faecal calprotectin (FCal) levels at EEN completion. Methods In 37 chil...

Background Treatment with the CD-TREAT solid food diet improves disease activity indices, faecal calprotectin (FCAL) levels and quality of life in adults and children with active Crohn’s disease (CD); particularly in patients who adhere to the diet. Here we describe changes in faecal microbiome parameters during therapy with CD-TREAT and explore th...

Background Treatment adherence is key to the efficacy of exclusive enteral nutrition (100% EN) in active Crohn’s disease (CD), but there are currently no biomarkers to objectively support this. We explored faecal parameters as putative biomarkers of compliance with 100% EN, and subsequently developed and validated the Glasgow Exclusive enteral Nutr...

Background and Aims Patients with inflammatory bowel disease [IBD] are often affected during their reproductive years and may have many perinatal queries that require the comprehensive perspectives of a multidisciplinary team [MDT]. The purpose of this topical review is to assess the scientific evidence and provide expert opinion related to nutriti...

Despite the progress in modern medicine, breast cancer still causes millions of death worldwide. Classical chemotherapy is associated with severe side effects, while cancer patients suffer also from cancer disease relapse. To this end, CAR-T or Natural killers (NK)-based immunotherapy is an innovative therapy that would hopefully give impressive th...

Background and aims Nutritional therapy with the Crohn’s Disease Exclusion Diet + Partial Enteral Nutrition [CDED+PEN] or Exclusive Enteral Nutrition [EEN] induces remission and reduces inflammation in mild-to-moderate paediatric Crohn’s disease [CD]. We aimed to assess if reaching remission with nutritional therapy is mediated by correcting compos...

Diet is a key modifier of risk of inflammatory bowel disease development and potentially a treatment option in patients with established disease. International organisations in gastroenterology and inflammatory bowel disease have published guidelines for the role of diet in disease onset and its management. Here, we discuss the major overarching th...

Introduction: It has been suggested that the gut microbiome of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is unable to ferment dietary fibre. This project explored the in vitro effect of fibre fermentation on production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) and on microbiome composition. Methods: Faecal samples were collected from 40 adults (>16...

It remains unclear whether suboptimal response to exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) in some children with Crohn's disease (CD) is explained by poor compliance. The current study measured faecal gluten immunogenic peptides (GIP), a biomarker of gluten intake, in 45 children (3-17 years) with CD, and explored associations with faecal calprotectin (FC...

Background It has been suggested that the gut microbiome of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is unable to ferment dietary fibre. This project explored the in vitro effect of fibre fermentation on production of short chain fatty acids (SCFA) and on microbiome composition. Methods Faecal samples were collected from 40 adults (>16 y) wi...

Background Exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) is an established induction treatment for active Crohn’s disease (CD) with a proposed mechanism of action involving the gut microbiome. We have previously shown that CD-TREAT diet, a food-based diet with similar dietary profile to EEN, improves rat ileitis and replicates the effect of EEN on the gut micr...

Background It is yet unclear whether suboptimal response to exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN), in some children with Crohn’s disease (CD), is explained by poor compliance. All proprietary feeds used for EEN are gluten-free; hence patients’ compliance to EEN could be determined by detecting gluten immunogenic peptide (GIP), a biomarker of gluten int...

Background The anti-inflammatory effect of exclusive enteral nutrition on the gut of children with Crohn’s disease is rapidly lost after food reintroduction. This study assessed disease dietary triggers following successful treatment with exclusive enteral nutrition. Methods Nutrient intake, dietary patterns and dietary biomarkers in faeces (glute...

Introduction To assess disease severity in Ulcerative Colitis, the Partial Mayo (P-Mayo) score is used in adults and the Paediatric Ulcerative Colitis Activity Index (PUCAI) score is used for paediatric patients. The P-Mayo score uses an assessment of bowel frequency, rectal bleeding and a physician’s global assessment to provide a score. The PUCAI...

In the human gut resides a vast community of microorganisms which perform critical functions for the maintenance of whole body homeostasis. Changes in the composition and function of this community, termed microbiome, are believed to provoke disease onset, including non-communicable diseases. In this review, we debate the current evidence on the ro...

The aetiology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is multifactorial, with diet and gut microbiota playing an important role. Nonetheless, there are very few studies, particularly clinical research, which have explored the interaction between diet and gut microbiota. In the current review, we summarise the evidence from clinical trials exploring the...

Objectives:The anti-inflammatory effect of exclusive enteral nutritionon thegut of children with Crohn’s disease is rapidly lost after food reintroduction. This study assessed disease dietary triggers following successful treatment with exclusive enteral nutrition. Methods: Nutrient intake, dietary patterns and dietary biomarkers in faeces (gluten...

Diet is a key modifier of risk of inflammatory bowel disease development and potentially a treatment option in patients with established disease. International organisations in gastroenterology and inflammatory bowel disease have published guidelines for the role of diet in disease onset and its management. Here, we discuss the major overarching th...

Introduction Treatment with exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) offers a nutritional therapy paradigm in Crohn’s disease, with the extensive modulation of gut microbiome being its proposed mechanism of action(1). Recent studies propose variable clinical efficacy for 85% EN (Cheat EN/CEN), 50% EN (Partial EN/PEN) and 20% EN (maintenance EN/MEN), and a...

Introduction/Background Exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) is an effective treatment for Crohn’s disease (CD). Aims We hypothesised that ingredients of EEN formulas are less likely to initiate a disease flare and their dietary elimination is not essential for disease amelioration. Methods We performed compositional analysis of EEN formulas with ev...

Bile acid diarrhoea (BAD) is a common disorder resulting from increased loss of bile acids (BAs), overlapping irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhoea (IBS-D). The gut microbiota metabolises primary BAs to secondary BAs, with differing impacts on metabolism and homeostasis. The aim of this study was to profile the microbiome, metabolic products and...

Background Exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) is an effective treatment of Crohn’s disease (CD). We hypothesise that food ingredients which are included in EEN formulas are less likely to initiate a disease flare and that their dietary elimination is not essential for disease amelioration. Methods We performed a compositional analysis of EEN formul...

Background Treatment with exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) offers a nutritional therapy paradigm in Crohn’s disease, with the extensive modulation of gut microbiome being its proposed mechanism of action (1). Recent studies propose variable clinical efficacy for 85% EN (Cheat EN/CEN), 50% EN (Partial EN/PEN) and 20% EN (maintenance EN/MEN), and a...

Background Treatment with exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) in Crohn’s disease (CD) offers a nutritional therapy paradigm that could potentially be replicated by less restrictive dietary therapies, thereby improving compliance and tolerability. On this premise, we developed a food-based diet (CD-TREAT) to replicate the efficacy of EEN. Using a comb...

Table S1. Differential expression analysis of nutrition-related terms between disease conditions. Four tables, Table_S1A (1991–1998), Table_S1B (1999–2004), Table_S1C (2005–2010), and Table_S1D (2011–2016) for differential expression analysis of nutrition-related terms between diseases using Kruskal-Wallis test. Only those terms are shown where the...

Table S2. Differential expression analysis of nutrition-related terms between years. Four tables, Table_S2A (CCD), Table_S2B (CD), Table_S2C (IBS), and Table_S2D (UC) for differential expression analysis of nutrition-related terms between years using Kruskal-Wallis test. Only those terms are shown where the adjusted P-value (Padj) < 0.05. Mean expr...

Table S3. Subset of ontological terms related to nutrition which were manually selected using clinical and expert opinion and were considered for statistical analysis in our study.

Introduction The diagnosis of bile acid diarrhoea (BAD) is often missed or misdiagnosed for irritable bowel syndrome – diarrhoea predominant (IBS-D) as these conditions have a similar clinical presentation. The principal hindrance to diagnosis of BAD is limited access to the diagnostic SeHCAT scan. Mechanisms of aetiology underlying BAD have not be...

With an unprecedented growth in the biomedical literature, keeping up to date with the new developments presents an immense challenge. Publications are often studied in isolation of the established literature, with interpretation being subjective and often introducing human bias. With ontology-driven annotation of biomedical data gaining popularity...

With an unprecedented growth in the biomedical literature, keeping up to date with the new developments presents an immense challenge. Publications are often studied in isolation of the established literature, with interpretation being subjective and often introducing human bias. With ontology-driven annotation of biomedical data gaining popularity...

Background inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is characterised by gut microbial dysbiosis, in terms of bacterial composition and functionality. HLA-B27 (B27) transgenic rat is an established model of gut inflammation often employed to study human IBD. The extent to which the microbiota of this model resembles this of human IBD has not been reported i...

Introduction The extensive modulation of the gut microbiome in Crohn’s disease (CD) children treated with exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) offers clues about EEN’s potential mode of action; but also on the development of novel therapies through dietary manipulation of the gut microbiota. This proof of concept study compared the effect of a novel ‘...

Background: The extensive modulation of gut microbiome in children with Crohn's disease (CD) treated with exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) offers clues about EEN's potential mode of action; but also on the development of novel therapies through dietary manipulation of the gut microbiota. This proof of concept study compared the effect of a novel “...

Background The consequences of subclinical coeliac disease (CD) in Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) remain unclear. We looked at growth, anthropometry and disease management in children with dual diagnosis (T1DM + CD) before and after CD diagnosis. Methods Anthropometry, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and IgA tissue transglutaminase (tTg) were collec...

Unraveling the role of the gut microbiota in obesity; cause or effect? - Volume 73 Issue OCE1 - M. J. Khan, V. Svolos, S. Cheng, G. M. Shaikh, C. Quince, C. A. Edwards, K. Gerasimidis

Background: Inflammatory Bowel Disease is characterized by chronic gastrointestinal inflammation and consists of Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. The various side effects of medication have intrigued research on the potential anti-inflammatory activity of natural products. Recent data show the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of...