By: Alvydas Pavilonis, Aldona Čerkašina-Lasinskaitė, Žaneta Pavilonytė
Microbiology Department at Kaunas Medical University
Introduction
Antibiotics were one of the most striking discoveries at the beginning of the last century, and many scientists believed that they would finally help the mankind to eradicate infectious diseases. However, it soon became evident that antibiotics cannot be used to solve all problems related to infectious pathologies. Since, there have been a growing number of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and diseases caused by secondary pathogens and opportunistic microorganisms that usually are microbiots natural to human environment. In most cases antibiotics are prescribed needlessly, selecting strains of microorganisms that are resistant to antimicrobic substances, causing allergies and dysbiosis inside the human body. A possible solution is to sustain and regulate microbiocenosis of the macroorganism in order to inhabit the human body with certain microorganisms – probiotics that are harmless yet multifunctional. Scientists are inclined to refer to the 21st century as the era of probiotics, as the view is that they will replace the majority of traditional medication. In the next 15-20 years, probiotics and functional nutrition products are predicted to constitute 30% of the food market and replace even 35-50% of medicine in the pharmaceutical market (1).
Probiotics and Prebiotics: What Is It? Probiotics are living microorganisms that are part of the natural (normal) human microflora or that are able to inhabit human body, and positively affect host health. Prebiotics are food substances that are non-digestible by human enzymes yet they stimulate the growth of normal microflora, as the latter decomposes them (2,3).
Composition of microbiots and the number of microorganisms varies by internal part of the body, and depends on the person’s age, sex, nutrition type, environmental microflora, climate, current medication, etc. Microflora becomes peculiar especially due to physiological and ecological conditions of the ecological niche that vary by internal part of the body. Many microorganisms in the biocenosis contain distinctive adhesins and use them to adhere to tissue cells for reproduction. Also, the number of microorganisms in the biocenosis depends on interspecific competition for food substances, suppressive effect of microbial metabolism products, and production of antibiotics and bacteriocins.
Objective of the paper – to summarise scientific literature that examines characteristics of probiotics and the expediency of their use in medical practice.
