Abstract

Leaky gut is an abnormal condition of increased gut permeability leading to a relevant influx of toxins and undigested proteins into the blood stream. Many are the factors playing a pivotal role in the triggering of such pathological condition. Disbiosis, wrong diet, genetic disposition, generic gut inflammation and therapeutic drugs abuse are among the main etiological elements driving toward such low bowel hyper-permeability stage, which then subsequently result into many apparently unrelated systemic inflammatory disorders. It is very easy to understand and accept that by breaking the intestinal barrier functioning, the resultant influx of toxins and undigested molecules represent a major safety challenge to the whole organism which therefore react by triggering a number of defensive mechanisms of systemic inflammation. Though in much cases such events might be not clinically flagrant in many others, depending on intensity, duration and specific subject susceptibility, might burst out into a wide variety of systemic disorders at first sight apparently distant from gut disturbances. Not only food allergies and intolerances, but also arthritis, fibromyalgia, vascular diseases, metabolic syndrome, and neurobehavioral disorders such as depression or anxiety, are some examples of diseases in somehow already linked to leaky gut incidence.