Postbiotics: potential applications in early life nutrition and beyond

Abstract

Postbiotics, also known as bioactive compounds, are those that form in a matrix after fermentation and are then employed to promote health. Realizing that an unbalanced population of microorganisms in the gut might contribute to the onset of a variety of diseases has sparked renewed interest in prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics as potential means of effecting such a change (including cancer and type-1 diabetes). Any metabolic by-products of a microorganism that have a positive impact on the host are considered postbiotics. By altering the gut microbiome, probiotics have a number of health benefits; nevertheless, technological restrictions such as viability controls have restricted their full potential usage in the pharmaceutical and food industries. As a result, the focus is changing away from viable probiotic bacteria and towards non-viable paraprobiotics and/or biomolecules produced from probiotics, also known as postbiotics. Because they impart a variety of health-promoting properties, paraprobiotics and postbiotics are developing idea in the functional foods sector. Although these concepts are not fully defined, they have been defined as follows for the time being. Probiotics produce postbiotics, which are detected in the cell-free supernatants of live microorganisms. Among them are amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, biosurfactants, organic acids, and short-chain fatty acids. The current review summarizes and discusses a variety of postbiotic molecules as well as their impact on human health.