University College Cork Researchers Show How Probiotics Help Prevent Disease

It has been difficult to find a negative word about probiotics in the scientific literature recently. From advantages with weight control, to vaginosis, to allergy prevention and assistance for gastric bypass patients, probiotics are the new wonder drug. Now University College Cork researchers have found that they have the potential to stop a huge range of pathogenic bacteria, simply by introducing probiotics at the site of infection or damage to the body.

The researchers studied bovine mastitis, porcine salmonellosis and listeriosis in mice. In all three disease models, the specially-developed probiotics preparation gave the animals significant resistance to the infections. In fact, the probiotics treatment was found to be as effective as the best antibiotics that were available for the disease … but without the problems of potential resistance developing. It helped resolve the symptoms as well as eliminate the source of infection, the pathogens.

The way that the probiotics worked, interesting, varied from disease to disease. In one case, the probiotics directly killed the pathogen, and in other cases, the probiotics had an effect on the host animal's immune system, which in turn was better able to fight the infection. The probiotics which killed unwanted germs directly was Lactobacillus salivarius, and it produced an antimicrobial peptide that simply killed the listeria bacteria. For the cows with mastitis, the Lactococcus lastis used could elicit an immune response that overwhelmed the bacteria.

Probiotic therapy could soon take over antibiotic therapy, if broad enough spectrum probiotics could be found to target a range of different diseases in one hit. Probiotics can be taken in smoothies or yogurts, or cultured into a huge range of other foods and drinks. They do not create resistant bacteria -- currently physicians often will not prescribe the antibiotics that could help patients feel better, because the potential for creating resistant bacteria is not in the interests of the general population.

The researchers were planning to begin studying the molecular mechanism of action of the probiotics, in order to develop artificial or chemical strategies for reproducing their results. However, natural health experts often say that the complete package is the most useful way to take a remedy.

The probiotics the team used were lactobacillus, however these were newly isolated from human volunteers in the study. The team did not use any particular commercial product, so unfortunately we can’t recommend any!