Postbiotics and Their Potential Applications in Early Life Nutrition and Beyond
1
Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University and Research, 6708 WE Wageningen, The Netherlands
2
Danone-Nutricia Research, 3584 CT Utrecht, The Netherlands
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(19), 4673; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20194673
Received: 4 September 2019
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Revised: 18 September 2019
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Accepted: 19 September 2019
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Published: 20 September 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microbiota, Food and Health)
Postbiotics are functional bioactive compounds, generated in a matrix during fermentation, which may be used to promote health. The term postbiotics can be regarded as an umbrella term for all synonyms and related terms of these microbial fermentation components. Therefore, postbiotics can include many different constituents including metabolites, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), microbial cell fractions, functional proteins, extracellular polysaccharides (EPS), cell lysates, teichoic acid, peptidoglycan-derived muropeptides and pili-type structures. Postbiotics is also a rather new term in the ‘-biotics’ field. Where consensus exists for the definitions of pre- and probiotics, this is not yet the case for postbiotics. Here we propose a working definition and review currently known postbiotic compounds, their proposed mechanisms, clinical evidence and potential applications. Research to date indicates that postbiotics can have direct immunomodulatory and clinically relevant effects and evidence can be found for the use of postbiotics in healthy individuals to improve overall health and to relief symptoms in a range of diseases such as infant colic and in adults atopic dermatitis and different causes of diarrhea.
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Keywords:
gut microbiota; fermented infant formula; postbiotics
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Wegh, C.A.M.; Geerlings, S.Y.; Knol, J.; Roeselers, G.; Belzer, C. Postbiotics and Their Potential Applications in Early Life Nutrition and Beyond. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20, 4673. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20194673
AMA Style
Wegh CAM, Geerlings SY, Knol J, Roeselers G, Belzer C. Postbiotics and Their Potential Applications in Early Life Nutrition and Beyond. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2019; 20(19):4673. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20194673
Chicago/Turabian StyleWegh, Carrie A.M., Sharon Y. Geerlings, Jan Knol, Guus Roeselers, and Clara Belzer. 2019. "Postbiotics and Their Potential Applications in Early Life Nutrition and Beyond" International Journal of Molecular Sciences 20, no. 19: 4673. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20194673
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