Microorganisms with Claimed Probiotic Properties: An Overview of Recent Literature

Abstract

Probiotics are defined as live microorganisms, which when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host. Health benefits have mainly been demonstrated for specific probiotic strains of the following genera: Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Saccharomyces, Enterococcus, Streptococcus, Pediococcus, Leuconostoc, Bacillus, Escherichia coli. The human microbiota is getting a lot of attention today and research has already demonstrated that alteration of this microbiota may have far-reaching consequences. One of the possible routes for correcting dysbiosis is by consuming probiotics. The credibility of specific health claims of probiotics and their safety must be established through science-based clinical studies. This overview summarizes the most commonly used probiotic microorganisms and their demonstrated health claims. As probiotic properties have been shown to be strain specific, accurate identification of particular strains is also very important. On the other hand, it is also demonstrated that the use of various probiotics for immunocompromised patients or patients with a leaky gut has also yielded infections, sepsis, fungemia, bacteraemia. Although the vast majority of probiotics that are used today are generally regarded as safe and beneficial for healthy individuals, caution in selecting and monitoring of probiotics for patients is needed and complete consideration of risk-benefit ratio before prescribing is recommended.

Probiotic Foods and Supplements Interventions for Metabolic Syndromes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Recent Clinical Trials

“…Lactis, and Bifidobacterium bifidum are affiliated with the Lactobacillus (L.) and Bifidobacterium (B.) genera [24][25][26]. Previous studies have linked these 2 genera with human gut health and metabolic functions [27,28].…”

Microbiome and Probiotics inHealth and HIV Infection

“…Different probiotics may differ in terms of safety, and different species or strains have different physiological effects and different health benefits. The most common probiotics belong to Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium genera: they can support a rich and complex microbiota and compete for nutrients, making the intestinal habitat hostile for detrimental bacteria, such as Clostridia, Enterobacteria and Eubacteria [68] (Figure 1). Antibiotics represent the most usual therapeutic strategy to treat bacterial infections, but they are responsible of changes in gut microbiota composition, host susceptibility to enteric infection and effects on intestinal absorption.…”

Effect of pH and dilution rate on specific production rate of extra cellular metabolites by Lactobacillus salivarius UCO_979C in continuous culture

“…This is due to their long history of use in humans and their GRAS category (generally recognised as safe) conferred by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States (www.fda.gov/). The use of LAB as probiotics is undoubtedly one of their major applications worldwide, being the genus the most widely used for this purpose (Lee and Salminen 2009;Fijan 2014).…”