The intestinal barrier is important in
preventing translocation of bacteria, toxins and antigens from the lumen of the
gut into the body. It can be disturbed by various causes, like certain
medicines, exercise, mast cell activation, high fat diet, stress, which leads
to an increased permeability, allowing amongst others enhanced entrance of
lipopolysaccharides (LPS) into the body. Enhanced permeability, or gut
leakiness, has been associated with different diseases.
Probiotics are
living microorganisms that have beneficial effects on the health of the host. Certain probiotics
have shown to be effective in different gut-related diseases. And some research
has proven that probiotics have strain-dependent capabilities in vitro as well as in vivo to improve the epithelial barrier function via different
mechanisms. In this study, a systematic literature search was performed to find
articles addressing the effects of probiotics on the barrier function
in human trials.
The systematic
literature search was conducted in PubMed up to 1 January 2013, using the
following (truncated) keywords “probiotic*, lactobacill* or bifidobact* AND
trial AND barrier or permeability”, in order to identify human in vivo studies
with probiotic products in which parameters for epithelial barrier function
were measured. In total, 29 studies were identified, but patients, bacterial
characteristics and methods to measure intestinal barrier function caused large
heterogeneity among these studies. About half of the studies showed positive
results of probiotics on the epithelial barrier function, indicating a clear
potential of probiotics in this field. In a case series of 14 patients using
Ecologicâ825, a probiotic
food supplement with known effect on epithelial barrier function, different markers
of intestinal integrity improved significantly.
Further studies in
this field should consider strain(s), dose and duration of the probiotic
supplementation as well as the markers used to measure epithelial barrier
function. Besides, the lactulose/mannitol test, zonulin and α1-antitrypsin
might be valuable markers to measure epithelial barrier function in future
experiments.
Article by Saskia
van Hemert, et al, from the Netherlands and Germany.
Full access: http://mrw.so/1IyFy9
Image by lactol only, from Flickr-cc.
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