Suchergebnisse

The health-promoting effects of probiotics include maintenance of normal intestinal microbiota, increased nutritional value of foods, and immune system stimulation. Multi-strain probiotics have recently been proposed as health-enhancing foods and functional food ingredients. Fruit-vegetable powders (FVP), being a kind of prebiotic, are food supplements that are non-digestible by the host, but can improve the host's health by selectively stimulating the growth or activities of gastrointestinal tract bacteria. However, the intestinal efficacy of multi-strain probiotics combined with FVP remains unclear. Therefore, the purpose of the present work was to explore the effect of multi-strain probiotics combined with FVP on intestinal inflammation. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was used to treat RAW264.7, which was then co-cultured with Caco-2 cells to mimic the intestinal inflammatory environment. Caco-2 cells were incubated with various probiotics and FVP (0.125 and 0.25 mg/mL). The inflammatory cytokines from the medium were collected for ELISA analysis, and the ZO-1 expression in the Caco-2 cells was examined by fluorescence assay. Probiotics combined with FVP significantly decreased the inflammatory cytokines, IL-6, and TNF-α, and increased ZO-1 expression when compared with the LPS only group. Probiotics combined with FVP could decrease inflammatory cytokines, and protect the intestinal barrier from tight junction dysregulation.

Abstract
Extensive efforts are underway to develop bacteriophages as therapies against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. However, these efforts are confounded by the instability of phage preparations and a lack of suitable tools to assess active phage concentrations over time. In this study, we use dynamic light scattering (DLS) to measure changes in phage physical state in response to environmental factors and time, finding that phages tend to decay and form aggregates and that the degree of aggregation can be used to predict phage bioactivity. We then use DLS to optimize phage storage conditions for phages from human clinical trials, predict bioactivity in 50-y-old archival stocks, and evaluate phage samples for use in a phage therapy/wound infection model. We also provide a web application (Phage-Estimator of Lytic Function) to facilitate DLS studies of phages. We conclude that DLS provides a rapid, convenient, and nondestructive tool for quality control of phage preparations in academic and commercial settings.