Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T17:18:44.181Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Why don't probiotics work?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2019

Bert Jan Korte
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands. b.j.korte@students.uu.nl
S. Mechiel Korte
Affiliation:
Division of Pharmacology, Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS), Utrecht University, Faculty of Science, 3584 CG, Utrecht, The Netherlands. s.m.korte@uu.nl Department of Biopsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780, Bochum, Germany. sijmen.korte@rub.de

Abstract

The conclusions reached by Hooks et al. urge the field to investigate the complex multipathway interactions between the microbiome and the gut-brain axis to understand the potential causal relationships involved. Claims in the field of microbiota-gut-brain research remain problematic without appropriate controls and adequate statistical power. A crucial question that follows from the authors' extensive review is: “Why don't probiotics work?”

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

European Commission. (2016) EU register of nutrition and health claims made on foods. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/labelling_nutrition/claims/register.Google Scholar
Korte, S. M., De Kloet, E. R., Buwalda, B., Bouman, S. D. & Bohus, B. (1996) Antisense to the glucocorticoid receptor in hippocampal dentate gyrus reduces immobility in forced swim test. European Journal of Pharmacology 301(1–3):1925.Google Scholar
Korte, S. M., Koolhaas, J. M., Wingfield, J. C. & McEwen, B. S. (2005) The Darwinian concept of stress: Benefits of allostasis and costs of allostatic load and the trade-offs in health and disease. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 29(1):338.Google Scholar
Korte-Bouws, G. A. H., van Heesch, F., Westphal, K. G. C., Ankersmit, L. M. J., van Oosten, E. M., Güntürkün, O. & Korte, S. M. (2018) Bacterial lipopolysaccharide increases serotonin metabolism in both medial prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens in male wild type rats, but not in serotonin transporter knockout rats. Pharmaceuticals 11(3):66.Google Scholar
Popper, K.R. (1963) Science as falsification. In: Conjectures and refutations, ed. Popper, K. R., pp. 3339. Routledge/Keagan Paul.Google Scholar
Suez, J., Zmora, N., Zilberman-Schapira, G., Mor, U., Dori-Bachash, M., Bashiardes, S., Zur, M., Regev-Lehavi, D., Ben-Zeev, Brik R., Federici, S., Horn, M., Cohen, Y., Moor, A. E., Zeevi, D., Korem, T., Kotler, E., Harmelin, A., Itzkovitz, S., Maharshak, N., Shibolet, O., Pevsner-Fischer, M., Shapiro, H., Sharon, I., Halpern, Z., Segal, E. & Elinav, E. (2018) Post-antibiotic gut mucosal microbiome reconstitution is impaired by probiotics and improved by autologous FMT. Cell 174(6):1406–23.Google Scholar
Timmerman, H. M., Koning, C. J., Mulder, L., Rombouts, F. M. & Beynen, A. C. (2004) Monostrain, multistrain and multispecies probiotics: A comparison of functionality and efficacy. International Journal of Food Microbiology 96(3):219–33.Google Scholar
van Heesch, F., Prins, J., Konsman, J. P., Westphal, K. G., Olivier, B., Kraneveld, A. D. & Korte, S. M. (2013) Lipopolysaccharide-induced anhedonia is abolished in male serotonin transporter knockout rats: An intracranial self-stimulation study. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 29:98103.Google Scholar
Zmora, N., Zilberman-Schapira, G., Suez, J., Mor, U., Dori-Bachash, M., Bashiardes, S., Kotler, E., Zur, M., Regev-Lehavi, D., Brik, R. B., Federici, S., Cohen, Y., Linevsky, R., Rothschild, D., Moor, A. E., Ben-Moshe, S., Harmelin, A., Itzkovitz, S., Maharshak, N., Shibolet, O., Shapiro, H., Pevsner-Fischer, M., Sharon, I., Halpern, Z., Segal, E. & Elinav, E. (2018) Personalized gut mucosal colonization resistance to empiric probiotics is associated with unique host and microbiome features. Cell 174(6):1388–405. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.08.041.Google Scholar