Using probiotics successfully against a number of animal diseases has helped scientists from University College Cork, Ireland to understand some of the ways in which they work, which could lead to them using probiotics to prevent and even to treat human diseases.
Presenting the work at the Society for General Microbiology meeting in Harrogate today (Thursday 2 April), Dr Colin Hill described how his team had used three animal models of disease that have human counterparts – bovine mastitis, porcine salmonellosis (a gastrointestinal disease) and listeriosis in mice (an often fatal form of food poisoning) – to demonstrate the protective effects of probiotics.
"Rather than use commercially available probiotics, we made our own probiotic preparations containing safe bacteria such as Lactobacillus species newly isolated from human volunteers" said Dr Hill, "In all three animal diseases we observed a positive effect in that the animals were significantly protected against infection".
The team also used probiotics to control disease in animals that were already infected. The results of these tests proved that administering these safe bacteria to an infected animal was as effective as the best available antibiotic therapies in eliminating the infectious agent and resolving the symptoms.