Probiotics, gut inflammation and barrier function

Probiotic therapy is based on the concept of a healthy well balanced gut rnicrobiota. Apart from restoring aberrant gut microbiota to normal, probiotics have been attributed with immunomodulatory effects, particularly at all early age, when establishing an indigenous microbiota has a particularly strong impact oil the immunophysiological regulation in the gut. Activation of toll-like receptors by members of microbiota bacteria has proved crucial for protection against gut injury, thus substantiating the beneficial effects of probiotics in clinical conditions with impaired gut barrier function such as allergic disease and rotavirtis diarrhea. The conception of probiotics, including the definition, has, revolved concomitant with the recent resurgence of research interest ill host-microbe cross-talk. According to the traditional definition, the live active culture beneficially affects the host by Improving its Intestinal microbial balance, while the current conception is based oil Specific clinical effects of clearly defined strains, Moreover, the advent of new molecular methods has made it possible to characterize gut microbiota alterations at different ages oil one hand, and in health and disease ()It the other. With identification of new Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus species and strains in the gastrointestinal tract of healthy subjects, better target- and age-specific probiotics may be devised. In the future, these may be recognized its agents for reducing the risk of human disease.