Exploring the Phosphatidylcholine in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Potential Mechanisms and Therapeutic Interventions

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a significant health problem with an increasing financial burden worldwide. Although various treatment strategies have been used, the results were not satisfactory. More and more researches have proved that the application of phosphatidylcholine (PC) may become an alternative therapy for IBD. Objective: This review aims to provide an overview of the possible mechanisms of PC and promote the potential application of PC for IBD therapy further. Methods: A comprehensive literature search was performed in PubMed with the following keywords: ‘phosphatidylcholine’, ‘inflammatory bowel disease’, ‘Crohn's disease’, ‘inflammation’, ‘ulcerative colitis’, ‘therapy’, ‘nanomedicines’, ‘PKCζ’, ‘lysophosphatidylcholine’, ‘microbiota’ and ‘drug carrier’. The logical operators “AND” and “OR” were applied to combine different sets of the search results. Results: Studies suggested that PC displays a significant effect in the treatment of IBD by modulating gut barrier function, remodeling gut microbiota structure, regulating polarization of macrophages, and reducing the inflammatory response. PC has also been exploited as a drug carrier for anticancer or anti-inflammation agents in multiple forms, which implies that PC has immense potential for IBD therapy. Conclusion: PC has shown promising potential as a new therapeutic agent or a drug carrier, with a novel, stable, prolonged mechanism of action in treating IBD. However, more high-quality basic and clinical studies are needed to confirm this.