Thirty-year evolution of probiotic therapy

Abstract

In the past forty-five years, the field of probiotics has grown from a handful of laboratory studies and clinical ideas into a legitimate research and translational entity conferring multiple benefits to humans around the world. This has been founded upon three principles: (i) the need for alterna-tives to drugs that either have sub-optimal efficacy or severe adverse effects; (ii) a growing interest in natural products and microbes, in particular cata-lyzed by studies showing the extent of microbes within humans and on our planet; and (iii) evidence on the genetics and metabolic properties of probi-otic strains, and clinical studies showing their effectiveness. While some man-ufacturers have sadly taken advantage of the market growth to sell supple-ments and foods they term probiotic, without the necessary human study evidence, there are more and more companies basing their formulations on science. Adherence to the definition of what constitutes a probiotic, conclu-sions based on tested products not generalizations of the whole field, and applications emanating from microbiome research identifying new strains that provide benefits, will make the next forty-five years significantly changed approaches to health management. Exciting applications will emerge for car-diovascular, urogenital, respiratory, brain, digestive and skin health, detoxifi-cation, as well as usage across the world's ecosystems.

Dietary supplementation with spray-dried porcine plasma has prebiotic effects on gut microbiota in mice

“…SDP supplementation had notable effects on probiotic species. The intestine houses numerous lactic acid-producing bacteria that promote health by producing metabolites that can interact with the host's own metabolism and immune system 41 . Most probiotics belonging to the genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium modulate the GALT and prevent adhesion of and colonization by pathogens 42 .…”

Multi-Product Lactic Acid Bacteria Fermentations: A Review

“…It is worth noting that most of the information related to probiotic characterization is derived from in vitro cell culture studies or in vivo testing using models, and this information must be corroborated in order to use the results at an industrial scale [87,88]. In recent years, there was growing interest in the characterization of new LAB isolates from different sources to use them as probiotics or for other applications [89]. Yet, in parallel to isolation and characterization efforts, identification at a species level (and, in some cases, at a strain level) is necessary for commercial purposes.…”

Probiotic consumption relieved human stress and anxiety symptoms possibly via modulating the neuroactive potential of the gut microbiota

“…This concept has been further expanded to encompass prebiotics that stimulate the growth of beneficial gut bacteria ( Sarkar et al, 2016 ). Since probiotics modulate the host gut microbial communities and their synthesis/release of certain neuroactive compounds, probiotic-based therapy has thus been proposed as an alternative treatment for some neurological and neurodegenerative diseases ( Puebla-Barragan and Reid, 2019 ; Westfall et al, 2017 ). Recent clinical studies have shown that some probiotic strains could help relieve stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms ( Messaoudi et al, 2011 ; Takada et al, 2016 ), particularly, the Bifidobacterium ( B .)…”