Jamie Lee Curtis seems to have been paid to have the right idea all along: Yogurt and other dairy products may be a better delivery system of probiotics, according to a new study in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
“Because we know that bacteria can adapt to their surroundings, we thought the conditions that probiotics are exposed to prior to ingestion might influence their capacity to maintain or improve human health,” said author Maria Marco, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of California at Davis, in a statement.
To test this theory, Marco and other researchers focused on a single probiotic bacterial strain, Lactobacillus casei BL23.
“Strains of L. casei are commonly added to dairy products as probiotics and, while strain BL23 is not commercially available, it is genetically similar to commercial strains and has also been studied for its capacity to prevent or reduce intestinal inflammation,” explained Marco.
If you give a mouse a bacterial strain
Mouse models of colitis (inflammation of the colon) were fed one of three substances: milk with L. casei, milk without it, and a nonfood buffer with the strain.
In the mice fed probiotic in milk, symptoms of colitis were reduced compared to milk alone and the nonfood probiotic. Interestingly, though, the numbers and composition of gut bacteria in the mice remained consistent in all three groups.
“This did not significantly alter the populations or diversity of the resident gut bacteria, suggesting that the benefits of the probiotic involve a direct effect of L. casei, or of a metabolic product of these bacteria upon the intestinal epithelium, rather than a global alteration of the indigenous intestinal microbiota,” Marco said.
According to the scientists, dairy products are already the most popular food matrices for probiotic ingestion. “Remarkably, the question of whether it makes any difference to consume probiotics in dairy products rather than other foods or nutritional supplements has not been systematically or mechanistically investigated in clinical or preclinical studies,” commented Marco.
But the team believes they have made an important discovery. “Our findings indicate that the manner in which a probiotic is delivered—whether in food or supplement form—could influence how effective that probiotic is in delivering the desired health benefits.”
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