Abstract
Athletes are prone to several health complications, including upper respiratory tract infections, allergies, and gastrointestinal discomforts during practice and after the performance due to the intense exercise, travel, insufficient rest and restricted food consumption. Probiotics are well known as complementary therapeutic and health supplements for several diseases and disorders. Studies suggest that the intervention of probiotics improved the health status of elite athletes, but the results are not consistent in all the studies. The beneficial effect of probiotic supplementation profoundly relies on species or strain, dose, duration, form, and host physiology. The manuscript summarizes the effect of probiotic supplementation on health status of athletes. The literature was collected from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar using the search term “probiotic and athletes”. As per the literature survey, probiotic supplementation improved the intestinal permeability, immune system, intestinal microbiota, inflammatory system, reduced the severity and incidence of respiratory tract infections, and duration of gastrointestinal symptoms. Several studies were conducted on Lactobacillus species and the outcomes were found to be species- or strain-specific. More studies are required to know the detailed mechanism behind the beneficial effect of probiotic intervention in athletes. Further studies are desired on formulation and optimization of probiotic supplements to develop generalized and personalized sports supplements to boost the overall health and enactment of elite athletes.
Highlights
Intense training, excessive exercise, insufficient rest, travel and improper nutrition are the factors that induce stress in athletes and make them prone to several health complications like immune depression, inflammatory dysregulation, increased respiratory tract infections, and oxidative and mental stress [1,2,3]
The results suggested that L. rhamnosus GG supplementation showed no beneficial effect on the prevalence of GI-symptom episodes and upper respiratory tract infections (URTI), but reduced the duration of GI-symptom episodes in healthy marathon runners [19]
The results suggested that the supplementation L. rhamnosus IMC 501® and L. paracasei IMC 502® mixture improved the antioxidant status of athletes during the rigorous training period [28]
Summary
Excessive exercise, insufficient rest, travel and improper nutrition are the factors that induce stress in athletes and make them prone to several health complications like immune depression, inflammatory dysregulation, increased respiratory tract infections, and oxidative and mental stress [1,2,3]. Probiotics are recommended as a health supplement to improve health status and manage diseases and disorders [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. The scientific reports that are available with details of probiotic dose and are relevant to the scope were selected and included in the review preparation (number of articles reviewed =19). These include the effect of probiotic supplements on the health status of athletes in terms of reducing exercise induced stress; improving the host immunity; reducing the symptoms of GI and upper respiratory tract infections; and/or improving intestinal microbiota and intestinal permeability
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