Probiotics - what's the latest?

[whisperit]

Probiotics seem to crop up here from time to time, and by coincidence, today I came across a very interesting research paper. It suggests that giving Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium cultures to lab mice with severe infections can reduce lung inflammation and maybe other systemic inflammatory responses.

Obviously, this is a LONG way from being any kind of recommendation for humans with auto-immune disease, but it is really interesting to see some proper science on the topic.

I'd be really interested if anyone could suggest other research-based evidence on the effect of probiotics in autoimmune disease.

(if you are up for a technical read, the paper is here

journals.plos.org/plosone/a...

[PMRpro]

The link doesn't work for me (getting page not found) - can you try putting it in again?

[whisperit in reply to PMRpro]

Is this better? (I've also re-entered it in the OP)

journals.plos.org/plosone/a...

[PMRpro in reply to whisperit]

Yup - that works... Thank you!

[SjogiBear]

Very interesting! I work in the field of dementia and read only yesterday about some research linking probiotic consumption to improved cognitive function. More interesting for us is the fact that they were also looking at other biomarkers in the study and . . .

"It also investigated the effect of probiotics on biomarkers for inflammation and metabolism in the body."

nhs.uk/news/2016/11November...

It would seem that there is possibly something positive to glean from this and unless you have a dairy allergy etc, it might be worth consuming probiotics anyway (BTW don't go rushing out to buy the commercial probiotic drinks - you only need to add in live yoghurt with some beneficial strains of bacteria in there: The probiotic drink contained the bacterial strains Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, Bifidobacterium bifidum and Lactobacillus fermentum. !!!)