REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Microbial Immunology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1666866
This article is part of the Research TopicCommunity Series in Interaction between the Gut Flora and Immunity in Intestinal Diseases: Volume IIView all articles
Microbiota and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: The Dual Effect Mechanism of Polysaccharide Therapy
Provisionally accepted
Yang Jihao
Jia Li*- Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guiyang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is characterized by chronic intestinal inflammation, strongly influenced by gut microbiota dysbiosis, barrier dysfunction, and immune imbalance. Increasing evidence highlights natural polysaccharides as promising therapeutic agents due to their dual roles in microbiota modulation and barrier reinforcement. Polysaccharides promote the growth of beneficial bacteria such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, enhance short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production, and repair mucosal damage by upregulating goblet cells and tight junction proteins. These effects collectively restore microbial homeostasis and attenuate inflammation. Recent advances in polysaccharide-based nanocarriers, including chitosan, alginate, and hyaluronic acid, further enhance efficacy by enabling mucoadhesion, stimuli-responsive release, and targeted delivery within the inflamed colon. Such systems improve local drug retention, reshape the gut microenvironment, and amplify the therapeutic functions of polysaccharides. This review summarizes the pathological mechanisms of IBD, the regulatory effects of polysaccharides on gut microbiota, and the emerging role of nanotechnology in optimizing their delivery. Despite encouraging preclinical evidence, challenges remain regarding structural complexity, bioavailability, and clinical translation. Clarifying structure–activity relationships and developing multi-responsive nanocarriers represent future directions. Collectively, polysaccharides and their nanoformulations hold strong potential as safe and effective strategies for IBD therapy.
Keywords: inflammatory bowel disease, Gut Microbiota, Polysaccharides, Nanoparticles, gut metabolites
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jihao and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jia Li, 24633366@qq.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.