Dairy products boost effectiveness of probiotics
2015-07-17
(Press-News.org) Washington, DC - July 17, 2015 - The success of probiotics for boosting human health may depend partly upon the food, beverage, or other material carrying the probiotics, according to research published on July 10th in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
"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," said corresponding author Maria Marco, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology, at the University of California at Davis.
In the study, the researchers investigated the probiotic strain, Lactobacillus casei BL23 in a mouse model of colitis, or inflammation of the colon. The mice that ingested the probiotic in milk had reduced symptoms compared to those that were fed milk without the probiotic, and the ones that received the probiotic within a nonfood supplement.
The investigators also took a census of the microbiota before and after ingestion of L. casei. "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," said Marco.
"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," she added.
According to the researchers, dairy products are the most popular food matrices for probiotic strains. "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. "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."
INFORMATION:
This article can be found online at http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/AEM.01360-15v1?ijkey=jUPjO13WBBjaQ&keytype=ref&siteid=asmjournals.
The American Society for Microbiology is the largest single life science society, composed of over 39,000 scientists and health professionals. Its mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-07-17
When a power company wants to build a new wind farm, it generally hires a consultant to make wind speed measurements at the proposed site for eight to 12 months. Those measurements are correlated with historical data and used to assess the site's power-generation capacity.
At the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence later this month, MIT researchers will present a new statistical technique that yields better wind-speed predictions than existing techniques do -- even when it uses only three months' worth of data. That could save power companies time ...
2015-07-17
Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego, have developed a new user-friendly resource to accompany the powerful gene editing tool called CRISPR/Cas9, which has been widely adopted to make precise, targeted changes in DNA. This breakthrough has the potential to facilitate new discoveries in gene therapies and basic genetics research. The research was published in the July 13 issue of Nature Methods.
The study describes an approach to simplify a laborious part of the gene editing process using the CRISPR/Cas9 system: choosing the best ...
2015-07-17
ROSEMONT, IL - Teaching coaches about injury prevention and contact restrictions pays off, say researchers who tracked injury rates among youth football players during the 2014 season.
"With an estimated three million youth aged 7 to 14 years old playing tackle football each year, preventing injuries is key. Our study showed that kids who received a comprehensive education from a coach had fewer injuries," said lead author Zachary Y. Kerr, PhD, MPH of the Datalys Center for Injury Research and Prevention.
Kerr and his team had athletic trainers evaluate and track ...
2015-07-17
Genetic differences between hemp and marijuana determine whether Cannabis plants have the potential for psychoactivity, a new study by University of Minnesota scientists shows.
"Given the diversity of cultivated forms of Cannabis, we wanted to identify the genes responsible for differences in drug content," says U of M plant biologist George Weiblen. While marijuana is rich in psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), hemp produces mostly a non-euphoric cannabidiol (CBD), but the genetic basis for this difference was a matter of speculation until now. The study was published ...
2015-07-17
A solar cell that produces fuel rather than electricity. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and FOM Foundation today present a very promising prototype of this in the journal Nature Communications. The material gallium phosphide enables their solar cell to produce the clean fuel hydrogen gas from liquid water. Processing the gallium phosphide in the form of very small nanowires is novel and helps to boost the yield by a factor of ten. And does so using ten thousand times less precious material.
The electricity produced by a solar cell can be used ...
2015-07-17
This article describes the effect of the preparation method of binary oxide supports (TiO2-Al2O3) on catalytic performance of V2O5/TiO2-Al2O3 catalysts for methanol selective oxidation to dimethoxymethane (DMM). The optimized catalyst exhibits a methanol conversion of 48.9% and a high DMM selectivity of 89.9% at 393 K, superior to V2O5/TiO2 and V2O5/Al2O3 catalysts.
Reported by Prof. Gong Jinlong of Tianjin University, the research article titled "Selective Oxidation of Methanol to Dimethoxymethane over V2O5/TiO2-Al2O3 Catalysts" was published on Science Bulletin June ...
2015-07-17
Time synchronization between ground and satellites is a key technology for satellite navigation system. With dual-channel satellite, a method called Two-Way Common-View (TWCV) satellite time transfer for Compass system is proposed in recent study.
The title of the paper related to the study is "The method and experiment analysis of two-way common-view satellite time transfer for compass system", which is written by LIU Li from Beijing Satellite Navigation Center and published in SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy 2015, 58. The researcher combines both characteristics ...
2015-07-17
Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, a small group of otolaryngologists have repeatedly testified, on behalf of the tobacco industry, that heavy smoking did not cause the cancer in cases of dying patients suing for damages, according to a study by a Stanford University School of Medicine researcher.
"I was shocked by the degree to which these physicians were willing to testify, in my opinion in an unscientific way, to deny a dying plaintiff -- suffering the aftermath of a lifetime of smoking -- of a fair trial," said Robert Jackler, MD, professor and chair of ...
2015-07-17
PHILADELPHIA (July 17, 2015) - A new study from the Monell Center and collaborating institutions suggests that a single set of genes affects a person's perception of sweet taste, regardless of whether the sweetener is a natural sugar or a non-caloric sugar substitute.
"Eating too much sugar is often seen as a personal weakness. However, our work suggests that part of what determines our perception of sweetness is inborn in our genetic makeup," said study author Danielle Reed, PhD, a behavioral geneticist at Monell. "Just as people born with a poor sense of hearing may ...
2015-07-17
New research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) shows how investors can significantly reduce the cost of implementing portfolio strategies - in some cases by more than 90 per cent.
The study, published today in the journal Financial Review, shows that many modern investment strategies often lead to low returns or even lose money in practice, as they are prone to large trading costs. Such costs include bid-ask spreads, brokerage fees and capital gain taxes and can dramatically affect investment returns, turning an otherwise winning strategy into a losing one.
Many ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Dairy products boost effectiveness of probiotics
