About Probiotics

Probiotic Microbes Could Be A Key To Good Health

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13 Mar 2006

Medical researchers are finding that one of the keys to good health could be living in our guts - specifically, in the world of microbes that live in our digestive tracks.

Researchers are discovering that this ?good? bacteria helps not only to stimulate digestive health, but may stimulate a healthy immune system. These probiotic bacteria may even be a key to understanding obesity. Gary Huffnagle, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan Health System, is one of the country's leading researchers into the world of probiotics.

?Current research into this microbial world is uncovering many benefits to eating a diet rich in probiotic nutrients,? Huffnagle says.

He says that until we are born, we are completely sterile of microbes. Once outside the womb, we are bombarded by microbes and soon we have 10 times more microbes in our body than the number of cells that make up the human body.

Good microbes and bad microbes

It is the bad microbes that cause disease. Good microbes work with the body's immune system to keep the bad microbes at bay by crowding them out. In the symbiotic relationship between good and bad microbes, recent research has uncovered the importance of these good microbes.

?The good microbes - and this is where probiotics come in - keep the bad microbes in small numbers. But they also stimulate the immune system and improve our digestive function. That's the subject of research that has been going on for years,? Huffnagle says.

Probiotics

Probiotics are bacteria that we eat and they're good for our health. They are found in a number of foods that are readily available in the supermarket, and they taste good. You can support probiotic growth by increasing the amount of cultured dairy products you eat, such as cheeses and yogurt, and the foods that encourage probiotics from these dairy products to multiply even further: spices, tea, red wine, berries, apples and beans.

Huffnagle says that most of these good microbes exist within our body in the digestive track, with the largest number occurring in the small and large intestines.

?It's the job of these good microbes to stimulate our immune system, and the other job they do is to stimulate good digestive health,? he says.

Historically, until about five years ago, probiotics were considered only within the realm of complementary and alternative medicine. As our understanding of the immune system and how it works has expanded, so has the understanding of the importance of probiotics and probiotic microbes in the gastrointestinal track in regulating the immune system.

?Today, the world of probiotics is emerging on the cutting-edge of mainstream medicine,? Huffnagle says.

Antibiotics and probiotics

We inadvertently kill off the good microbes in our body with antibiotics. Since antibiotics are necessary for killing the bad microbes that cause some diseases, they are important for helping to keep people healthy. However, the side effect to taking antibiotics is the elimination of the good microbes within our body along with the bad ones.

?We're now finding that eliminating all the good microbes from our body results in a weaker immune system, which we believe is leading to problems such as increased incidence of chronic disease, including allergies like asthma,? Huffnagle says. ?Once you take antibiotics as your physician prescribed, follow it with some form of probiotic supplement to get the microflora in your gut back to where it should be. Your recovery and your health will be much greater.?

Since probiotic microbes do not cause disease, there's no such thing as having too much of them. And Huffnagle points out that foods rich in probiotics taste good.

New products are coming on the market to specifically support probiotic health. Typically, these are fermented dairy products in which companies have added one or two types of highly concentrated probiotic bacteria.

At the U-M Health System, Huffnagle's research focuses on one of the greatest unknown questions about probiotics: How do they work?

?We are examining how microbes in the gut communicate with the immune system. Many diseases have an immunologic basis, so we want to understand the good communication that goes on between the microbes and the immune system,? he says.

Probiotics and obesity

Another emerging topic of research examines a possible link between probiotics and obesity, and a number of researchers around the country are starting to look at this connection.

?We should have known that probiotics and the gut microflora play a role in metabolism - it's a connection that's been known in the agriculture industry for years,? Huffnagle says.

Agriculture experts quickly noted that sick livestock gained weight when dosed with antibiotics, leading to the industry practice of routinely rotating various low-dose antibiotics in livestock feed. Huffnagle says the antibiotics actually change the metabolism of the animals, creating something called ?enhanced feed efficiency? - an improved ability to retain fat.

?We take the antibiotics to recover from a microbial illness, but the trade-off is that fat we eat may be staying with us instead of being metabolized and converted to energy,? Huffnagle says.

He says that antibiotics are important for fighting disease and should always be taken according to physician recommendations. However, making a point of eating dairy products rich in probiotic microbes and foods that provide nutrition for the probiotics will help these microbes prevent immune system and metabolic problems.

http://www.medilexicon.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=39380∞

Probiotics Show Promise In Treating Gastrointestinal Diseases

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08 May 2006

Current interest in probiotics is motivated not only by the clinical data showing the efficacy of some probiotic bacteria, but also by the increasing antibiotic resistance of pathogenic bacteria (particularly in hospitals) and the rise of consumers' demand for natural substitutes of drugs.

Among probiotic applications, reduction of diarrhea is probably the best-documented effect confirmed by recent meta-analyses. Research on Helicobacter pylori indicates that probiotics are unable to eradicate the infection, but could be useful in decreasing infection levels and as adjuvants of therapy-associated side effects. Studies performed in inflammatory bowel disease suggest that high doses of probiotics and most likely a combination of different lactobacilli and bifidobacteria are more effective in decreasing inflammatory score and maintaining patients in remission than a single probiotic strain. Probiotic studies evaluating amelioration of symptoms in irritable bowel syndrome would require more sustained patient numbers, but the efficacy seems to be strain-dependent. Not enough probiotic intervention trials have been reported on Colon Cancer to allow any firm conclusion.

Few randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled human trials are available, and some involved only small numbers of patients. They are difficult to compare because of the differences in probiotic strains employed, doses and formulation. However, the accumulated data is encouraging.

http://www.medilexicon.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=42901∞

Researchers Look To Solve Mystery Behind EGCG And Probiotics

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10 Oct 2006

When talking about nutrition, EGCG and probiotics are two words that we've been hearing a lot about these days. But most consumers don't know what they are, where they are found and what they do. Some of that mystery was cleared up this week at the 47th Annual Symposia of the American College of Nutrition (ACN) where leading nutrition experts revealed new research about the health benefits of these two ingredients.

EGCG

EGCG is the acronym for epigallocatechin gallate, a component found in green tea. Scientific research has associated EGCG with a reduced risk for age-related and chronic diseases including cancer and cardiovascular disease. Because of its ability to enhance the body's use of calories to generate heat and energy, a process called thermogenesis, EGCG has also been associated with improvements in weight maintenance.

According to Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, of the Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University, who led a session on EGCG at the meeting, tea provides more than 60 percent of the flavonoids available in the U.S. diet. Flavonoids are plant compounds that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits. They also modulate the destruction of cancer cells and support a healthy vascular system.

"Recommendations from current research for beverage consumption acknowledge tea as a high-value beverage for its low calorie content, high phytonutrient content and recognized health benefits," Blumberg reported.

Michael Boschmann, PhD, a scientist from Universitary Medicine, Charite in Berlin, Germany, reported results from a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over study that found that 300 mg EGCG can increase the process known as fat oxidation or the burning of body fat by as much as eight percent. Effects were greatest following a high-fat meal.

Swen Wolfram, PhD, a scientist with DSM Nutritional Products Ltd, Basel, Switzerland suggested that EGCG may also be effective for the prevention and treatment of metabolic disorders like diabetes. In a pre-clinical animal study conducted in Switzerland, EGCG supplementation reduced body fat caused by a high-fat diet in a dose-dependent manner. Wolfram reported several significant findings from this study. First, EGCG supplementation caused a significant weight loss within one month in the animals with diet-induced obesity, (i.e., weight gain was caused by consumption of a high fat diet). EGCG supplementation also decreased the percentage of body fat in a dose-dependent fashion in one group said to have genetic obesity and improved the response to glucose in another group genetically prone to diabetes, again with greater improvements with increasing levels of supplementation. In addition, a study conducted by Peter Howe, director of the Nutritional Physiology Research Center at the University of South Australia, showed that EGCG lowered blood glucose by 7.6% in a sub-group of overweight post-menopausal women with elevated glucose levels.

Joe Vita, MD, a professor of medicine at Boston University, investigated the potential cardiovascular benefits of EGCG in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind crossover study of 42 patients supplemented with 300 mg of EGCG. Used as a marker of cardiovascular health, endothelial function measures the elasticity in the inner lining of the heart's major blood vessels. When these vessels are more pliable, it indicates that blood flow is sufficient and there is a reduced risk of blockage or cardiac events. In this study, EGCG supplementation significantly improved endothelial function by 21% and thereby the risk of cardiovascular events, at levels comparable to the effect of drinking tea or other flavonoid-rich foods or beverages.

Probiotics

Probiotics are the healthy bacteria found among the intestinal microbiota, the living microorganisms in the intestinal tract necessary for proper digestive health. They are responsible for protective effects including healthy turnover of cells in the intestinal tract, production of essential nutrients such as short-chain fatty acids and amino acids, stimulation of intestinal immunity and prevention of overgrowth of harmful organisms. Probiotics can also be found in fermented food products such as yogurt and in supplements.

"We have only begun to scratch the surface about the health benefits of probiotics," said Kelly Tappenden, PhD, associate professor of nutrition and gastrointestinal physiology of the University of Illinois, who led a session on the subject at the ACN meeting. She added, "A host of influences including genetics, environment, diet and disease can dramatically offset this balance of microbiota in the GI tract and affect our health."

Simin Meydan, DVM, PhD, also of the HNRCA at Tufts, reviewed the research on probiotics and suggested that probiotics consumption may positively enhance the immune response and allow for improved resistance to infectious diseases.

Yet, researchers are still unclear on the method of action behind probiotics' benefits. Robert Clancy, PhD, of The University of New Castle, Australia, suggested that there will be "Immunobiotic Evolution," stemming from the growing body of research demonstrating that probiotics have immune system benefits. In reviewing the research on the method of action, he said, "Research on probiotics is moving rapidly to identify the mechanism by which probiotics can stimulate the intestinal lining, how that function can lend benefit for protective immunity, diminish allergic hypersensitivity in the digestive trace and reduce cancer risk."

Eamonn Quigley, MD, of University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, reviewed the literature and shared his analysis that there may be a strong indication for use of probiotics in the treatment of many gastrointestinal diseases, given the offset balance of microbiota in individuals with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome. Quigley offered several proposed methods of action including probiotics' anti-inflammatory properties, as well as displacing harmful bacteria and replenish the balance of healthy flora along the digestive tract.

Adding EGCG and Probiotics to the Diet

Although EGCG is found naturally in tea, it is also available as a single-entity dietary supplement or as part of some multivitamin formulations. Snapple(TM) Green Tea, supplemented with Teavigo(TM) EGCG from DSM Nutritional Products, is now available nationwide with 55 mg per 17.5 ounce bottle.

Probiotics are now being added to dairy products and are also available in dietary supplement form. LAFTI(R) probiotics from DSM can not only be applied to dairy products such as yogurts, milk drinks and cheese, but also to non-dairy products such as spreads, desserts, and cereals.
http://www.medilexicon.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=53704∞

New Data On The Probiotic Strain Bifantis(R) Shows Anti-Inflammatory Properties And Increased Health Benefits

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22 May 2007

The biotechnology company Alimentary Health today announced results from two studies that demonstrate the anti-inflammatory activity of a natural probiotic bacterial strain of human origin, Bifantis(R) (Bifidobacterium infantis 35624), in models of arthritis and Salmonella infection. Data from these studies were presented this week at the 38th annual Digestive Disease Week (DDW) conference taking place in Washington D.C.

The inflammatory response is a key part of the immune system's battle against invaders, but in certain conditions and diseases, it can do more harm than good by injuring healthy tissue. Inflammation is associated with a variety of conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and more. Bifantis has previously been shown to modulate the inflammatory response in a clinical trial in irritable bowel syndrome. The results announced this week demonstrate that the anti-inflammatory effects of Bifantis are not restricted to the gastrointestinal tract.

"Inflammation is a major factor in a number of chronic diseases, which affect millions of people," said Barry Kiely, Chief Executive Officer, Alimentary Health and an early investigator of the probiotic effects of Bifantis. "Data continue to show that Bifantis has anti-inflammatory activity, which may be useful in the management of inflammation-linked diseases."

In one of the studies released today, four bacterial strains were fed to mice. Of these four strains, researchers determined that only Bifantis delayed the onset of artificially induced arthritis and resulted in less severe arthritic symptoms. This study represents some of the latest work assessing the link between diet involving probiotics and certain autoimmune diseases.

In the second study, mice were fed Bifantis and then exposed to Salmonella, a common bacteria associated with a form of food poisoning. Animals that received Bifantis showed dramatically increased numbers of certain immune cells that control the immune system's response to harmful pathogens, in this case Salmonella. Bifantis also increased the numbers of T- regulatory cells in the body, in effect limiting the concentrations of certain signals essential to inflammation, such as cytokines.
http://www.medilexicon.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=71631∞