Current Opinion in the Pharmaceutical Management of Irritable and Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Role of ATP

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are two chronic intestinal diseases having a mutual pathophysiological pathways with different manifestations. Generally, inflammatory mediators and cytokines orchestrate the scenario that amongst them, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) is a cornerstone. Nowadays different medications and drug classes are administered for treatment of IBD and IBS but there is no full cure and side effects of drugs limit their usage. Concerning the novel suggestion of ATP in the treatment of bowel diseases, we were invited to conduct a systematic review. MeSh keywords of IBD, IBS, TNF-α, IL-12, and ATP were searched in search engines like Pubmed, Scopus, Web of sciences, Embase, and Google scholar. Comparing the common medications with ATP in terms of side effects, efficacy, and other limitations lead us to the conclusion that ATP could be a reasonable alternative that may replace all other medications in this field in the near future. ATP is prepared as lyophilized form that is stable at room temperature for at least 1-3 years and can be used as intravenous infusion in the setting of private homes without direct medical supervision. Other routes of administration include intraperitoneal, subcutaneous, oral, topical, nasal, and sublingual. Also, it can be mixed with parenteral and enteral nutrition cocktails. The review also discussed some recent patents relevant to the field.