Abstract
Probiotic microorganisms are incorporated into a wide variety of foods, supplements, and pharmaceuticals to promote human health and wellness. However, maintaining bacterial cell viability during storage and gastrointestinal transit remains a challenge. Encapsulation of bifidobacteria within food-grade hydrogel particles potentially mitigates their sensitivity to environmental stresses. In this study, Bifidobacterium longum subspecies and strains were encapsulated in core-shell microgels consisting of an alginate core and a microgel shell. Encapsulated obligate anaerobes Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis and Bifidobacterium longum subsp. longum exhibited differences in viability in a strain-dependent manner, without a discernable relationship to subspecies lineage. This includes viability under aerobic storage conditions and modeled gastrointestinal tract conditions. Coating alginate microgels with chitosan did not improve viability compared to cells encapsulated in alginate microgels alone, suggesting that modifying the surface charge alone does not enhance delivery. Thus hydrogel beads have great potential for improving the stability and efficacy of bifidobacterial probiotics in various nutritional interventions.
Highlights
Beneficial bacteria are often incorporated into functional foods and nutritional interventions to be ingested orally as probiotics
Chitosan-coating of alginate beads was postulated to enhance the viability of encapsulated probiotics by reducing their exposure to environmental stresses during storage and within the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) (Kamalian et al, 2014)
Coating the alginate beads with chitosan caused a small increase in their size and changed their charge from negative to positive
Summary
Beneficial bacteria are often incorporated into functional foods and nutritional interventions to be ingested orally as probiotics This includes humans and livestock animals that receive direct-fed microbials to enhance health outcomes and reduce pathogen load (Braat et al, 2006; Puccio et al, 2007; Neal-McKinney et al, 2012; Watson and Preedy, 2015). The bifidobacterial taxa longum, infantis, and suis were previously classified as discrete species, but more recently they were reclassified as subspecies of B. longum (Sakata et al, 2002). Their unification as a single species is based primarily on genomic
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