. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Sep 4.

Published in final edited form as: J Environ Health Sci. 2015 Mar 27;1(2):10.15436/2378-6841.15.007. doi: 10.15436/2378-6841.15.007

Table 2.

Possible biological mechanisms for a positive (pathogenic) or inverse (protective) association between isotretinoin and inflammatory bowel disease.

Possible biological mechanisms for a positive (pathogenic) association

Stimulation of natural killer (NK) cells and apoptosis (Mora et al. 2009)

Inhibition of neutrophil chemotaxis (Alhusayen et al. 2013)

Differentiation of B-cells (Femia & Vleugels 2013)

Disrupted glycoprotein synthesis and epithelial tissue growth (Femia & Vleugels 2013)

Possible biological mechanisms for an inverse (protective) association

Inhibition of proinflammatory interleukin-17 producing T-helper cells (Mucida et al. 2007)

Enhanced barrier function of intestinal epithelium (Osanai et al. 2007)

Up-regulation of T-regulatory cells (Crockett et al. 2009)