Postbiotics: From Emerging Concept to Application
Sunita Aggarwal1, Vandana Sabharwal2,
Manjula Suri3*,
Pragya Kaushik4,
Aayushi Aayushi5 and
Anushka Joshi6 - 1Dr Sunita Aggarwal, India
- 2Dr Vandana Sabharwal, India
- 3Dr Manjula Suri, India
- 4Pragya Kaushik, India
- 5Aayushi, India
- 6Anushka Joshi, India
The microbiome innovation has resulted in an umbrella term, postbiotics, which refers to nonviable microbial cells, metabolic byproducts and their microbial components released after lysis. Postbiotics, modulate immune response, gene expression, inhibit pathogen binding, maintain intestinal barriers, help in controlling carcinogenesis and pathogen infections. Postbiotics have antimicrobial, antioxidant, and immunomodulatory properties with favourable physiological, immunological, neuro-hormonal, regulatory and metabolic reactions. Consumption of postbiotics relieves symptoms of various diseases and viral infections such as SARS-CoV-2. Postbiotics can act as alternatives for pre-probiotic specially in immunosuppressed patients, children and premature neonates. Postbiotics are used to preserve and enhance nutritional properties of food, elimination of biofilms and skin conditioning in cosmetics. Postbiotics have numerous advantages over live bacteria with no risk of bacterial translocation from the gut to blood, acquisition of antibiotic resistance genes. The process of extraction, standardisation, transport, and storage of postbiotic is more natural. Bioengineering techniques such as fermentation technology, high pressure etc., may be used for the synthesis of different postbiotics. Safety assessment and quality assurance of postbiotic is important as they may induce stomach discomfort, sepsis and/or toxic shock. Postbiotics are still in their infancy compared to pre- and pro- biotics but future research in this field may contribute to improved physiological functions and host health. The current review comprehensively summarises new frontiers of research in postbiotics.
Keywords: Postbiotics, microbiome, Cell free Suspensions (CFS), bacterial lysate, Lactobacillus, Nutritional benefits
Received: 01 Mar 2022;
Accepted: 01 Sep 2022.
Copyright: © 2022 Aggarwal, Sabharwal, Suri, Kaushik, Aayushi and Joshi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dr. Manjula Suri, Dr Manjula Suri, Department of Physiology and Promotive Health, University of Delhi, Institute of Home Economics, New Delhi, India, India