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Lb farciminis, a probiotic with beneficial effects on digestive health

• Researchers at TOXALIM (Research Centre in Food Toxicology, INRA, Toulouse, France) have been working for more than ten years on the role of food in gut inflammation and susceptibility to intestinal pain.
• They have notably shown that in the rat, ingestion for several days of the probiotic Lactobacillus farciminis relieved the pain induced by distension of the colon and reduced experimental colonic inflammation.
• Their most recent studies have focused on elucidating the mechanisms in play.

The gut-brain axis and the microbiota: a three-way dialogue

• The idea of a brain-gut axis is not new; the first research on this subject was carried out during the 1960s. However, the fact that this communication works both ways; or in other words, the gut can send messages towards the brain, is a more recent concept.
• Even more innovative is the involvement of the intestinal flora, and the contribution of probiotics to this gut-brain dialogue. During their study, the INRA researchers demonstrated the ability of the probiotic Lb farciminis to attenuate the neuroendocrine response to stress induced by pathogenic bacteria.
• As a mechanism of action, they proposed prevention of an increase in intestinal permeability and thus restrictions on passage to the inner environment of lipopolysaccharides, a component in the cell wall of these bacteria present in the gut.

The black box deciphered....

• It thus appears that in rodents, acute stress induced by pathogenic bacteria results in activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis and also in an increase in intestinal permeability and neuro-inflammation affecting the hypothalamic region of the brain.
• A direct consequence of this is opening of the tight junctions which fuse intestinal epithelial cells together, causing an increased passage of lipopolysaccharides (LPS) into the circulation.An increase in circulating LPS thus appears to be directly linked to the effects of stress.
• Administration of the probiotic Lb farciminis induces a reduction in intestinal permeability in animals, and in the load of circulating LPS, thus modulating the response to stress.