Inflammation has been widely demonstrated to respond to various stimuli, such as oxidative stress, bacterial and virus infection, and some physiological process, while a chronic and excessive inflammatory response is a significant risk factor to develop various human diseases. Different dietary styles, which may lack some key nutrients, are strongly linked to poor health outcomes, and associated inflammation may at least partly mediate this.

An increasing number of compelling reports are recently published suggesting that some nutrients, like amino acids, oligosaccharides, and short-chain fatty acids, exhibit anti-inflammatory functions, which will help understand nutritional contributions in the treatment and control of certain inflammatory diseases. Meanwhile, nutrients show a close relationship with the gut microbiota, which further influences gastrointestinal inflammatory responses. Little is known about how this relationship is affected by dietary nutrients that alleviate inflammation via mediating the composition and richness of the microbiota. Also, molecular mechanisms of selected nutrients functioning to alleviate inflammatory diseases have not been clearly investigated. Thus, there is an urgent need to advance scientific knowledge on nutrients alleviating inflammatory diseases.

The purpose of this special issue is to publish new information in this area, which will aid the development of nutritional strategies for the treatment and/or prevention of inflammation. Studies which improve our understanding of the molecular and biochemical mechanisms behind the effects of nutrients on inflammation will be of particular interest.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Nutrient metabolism in inflammatory response
• Nutritional regulation of inflammatory response
• Nutrients and microbiota in inflammatory diseases
• Identification of nutrition relative molecular and signal targets in inflammatory response