Colon Drug Delivery Systems for the Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is one of the most common chronic diseases that affect the entire gastrointestinal tract (GIT) especially the colon. Its symptoms extend from mild diarrhea, abdominal pain, and bloody diarrhea to severe conditions which affect the quality of life. Many treatments have been developed to treat and cure IBD and to improve patient's quality of life. The big challenge faces the newly developed treatments is the site of action as the colon presents at the distal end of the GIT and have a complex biological environment. Many technologies have been investigated to target the colon, load higher amounts of active ingredients, and decrease unwanted side effects resulted from upper GIT absorption. This review briefly discusses the IBD, treatment lines, physiological considerations, and all methods of colon targeting technologies starting from the traditional methods which based on pH, time, and microbial content of the colon. Also, we discussed in detail all new techniques based on Micro and Nanotechnology which improve the effectiveness of used therapeutics.