AIM: To assess the vitamin A status of patients with Crohn’s disease (CD) by evaluating serum retinol levels and the relative dose response (RDR) test (liver retinol stores). METHODS: Vitamin A nutritional status was measured by serum retinol obtained by high performance liquid chromatography and the RDR test for evaluation of the hepatic stores. Body composition was performed by densitometry by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Vitamin A dietary intake was assessed from a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. RESULTS: This study included 38 CD patients and 33 controls. Low serum retinol concentrations were detected in 29% of CD patients vs 15% in controls (P < 0.005). The RDR test was positive in 37% of CD patients vs 12% in controls, which indicated inadequate hepatic vitamin A stores (P < 0.005). Individuals with hypovitaminosis A had lower BMI and body fat compared with those without this deficiency. There was no association between vitamin A deficiency and its dietary intake, ileal location, presence of disease activity and prior bowel resections. CONCLUSION: Patients with CD have higher prevalence of vitamin A deficiency, as assessed by two independent methods.

The objective of this study was to systematically review the literature to verify the efficacy and safety of curcumin as a complementary therapy for the maintenance or induction of remission in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A comprehensive search was conducted by two independent authors in MEDLINE (PubMed), Scopus, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, Lilacs, Food Science and Technology Abstracts, and ScienceDirect. The search terms “curcumin”, “curcuma”, “inflammatory bowel disease”, “proctocolitis”, “crohn disease”, and “inflammation” were combined to create search protocols. This study considered randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in any language before March 2020 that evaluated the effects of curcumin on inflammatory activity and the maintenance or remission of IBD patients. After duplicates were removed, 989 trials were identified, but only 11 met the eligibility criteria. Five of these were considered to be biased and were excluded. Therefore, six trials were considered in this review. All the studies included in the systematic review were placebo-controlled RCTs conducted on individuals with ulcerative colitis (UC). All the RCTs reported that curcumin was well tolerated and was not associated with any serious side effects. Studies show that curcumin may be a safe, effective therapy for maintaining remission in UC when administered with standard treatments. However, the same cannot be stated for Crohn’s disease due to the lack of low bias risk studies. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed before curcumin can be recommended as a complementary therapy for UC.