Several recent reports describe a role of probiotics as a therapeutic approach for celiac disease (CD). Two undigested A-gliadin peptides, P31-43 and P57-68, are central to CD pathogenesis, inducing an innate and an adaptive immune response, respectively. They enter enterocytes and localize to vesicular compartment to induce their toxic/immunogenics effects. In this article, we tested the effect of probiotic Lactobacillus paracasei (LP) CBA L74 (International Depository Accession Number LMG P-24778), its supernatant and LP-fermented cereals on gliadin peptides, P31-43 and P57-68, entrance in Caco-2 cells. Both LP CBA L74 and its supernatant inhibit P31-43 (intensity of fluorescence; FI: 75%) and P57-68 (FI: 50%) entrance in Caco2 cells, indicating that this biological effect is due to some product included in LP CBA L74 supernatant. This effect was present also after fermentation of cereals. This study describes a novel effect of probiotics in the prevention of undigested gliadin peptides toxic effects.

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BackgroundIn vivo assays cannot always be conducted because of ethical reasons, technical constraints or costs, but a better understanding of the digestive process, especially in infants, could be of great help in preventing food-related pathologies and in developing new formulas with health benefits. In this context, in vitro dynamic systems to simulate human digestion and, in particular, infant digestion could become increasingly valuable.ObjectiveTo simulate the digestive process through the use of a dynamic model of the infant gastroenteric apparatus to study the digestibility of starch-based infant foods.DesignUsing M.I.D.A (Model of an Infant Digestive Apparatus), the oral, gastric and intestinal digestibility of two starch-based products were measured: 1) rice starch mixed with distilled water and treated using two different sterilization methods (the classical method with a holding temperature of 121°C for 37 min and the HTST method with a holding temperature of 137°C for 70 sec) and 2) a rice cream with (premium product) or without (basic product) an aliquot of rice flour fermented by Lactobacillus paracasei CBA L74. After the digestion the foods were analyzed for the starch concentration, the amount of D-glucose released and the percentage of hydrolyzed starch.ResultsAn in vitro dynamic system, which was referred to as M.I.D.A., was obtained. Using this system, the starch digestion occurred only during the oral and intestinal phase, as expected. The D-glucose released during the intestinal phase was different between the classical and HTST methods (0.795 grams for the HTST versus 0.512 for the classical product). The same analysis was performed for the basic and premium products. In this case, the premium product had a significant difference in terms of the starch hydrolysis percentage during the entire process.ConclusionsThe M.I.D.A. system was able to digest simple starches and a more complex food in the correct compartments. In this study, better digestibility of the premium product was revealed.

In recent years, scientific interest in the development of non‐dairy‐based functional foods is increasing progressively and the fermentation of cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetable‐based foods is becoming an important scientific research topic for the production of new probiotic products. In particular, legumes represent a possible alternative to protein foods from animal origins and an adequate fermentation substrate as they contain high amount of nutrients, such as proteins, carbohydrates, fibres, vitamins, and minerals, which are all useful to the growth and metabolic activity of certain microorganisms. This work focuses on the feasibility of developing a dry legume‐based functional product using a fermentation process carried out on a 10% w/v navy bean suspension, in a lab‐scale stirred batch reactor. After soaking and cooking dried navy beans, the fermentation tests performed on the resulting medium using Lactobacillus paracasei CBA L74 showed a maximum bacterial count of 109 CFU/mL after 20 hours and a maximum lactic acid concentration of 1.9 g/L after 16 hours of process time. A freeze‐drying process was performed on the fermented bean suspension, showing a 2‐log microbial reduction and a bacterial viability in the resulting probiotic powder of 3.7 × 108 CFU/g.

The intestinal microbiota is a real ecosystem composed of several bacterial species and a very huge amount of strains that through their metabolic activities play a crucial role in the development and performance of the immune system and other functions. Microbiota modulation by probiotics establishes a new era into the pharmaceutical and healthcare market. Probiotics play, in fact, an important role in helping and sustaining human health, but in order to produce benefits, their viability must be preserved throughout the production process up to consumption, and in addition, their bioactivity required to be safeguarded while passing through the gastrointestinal tract. In this frame, encouraging results come from encapsulation strategies that have proven to be very promising in protecting bacteria and their viability. However, specific effort has to be dedicated to the design optimization of the encapsulation process and, in particular, to the processing parameters that affect capsules microstructure. Herein, focusing on calcium alginate microspheres, after a preliminary selection of their processing conditions based on size distribution, we implemented a micro-rheological analysis, by using the multiple-particle tracking technique, to correlate the inner microstructure to the selected process conditions and to the viability of the Lactobacillus paracasei CBA L74. It was assessed that the explored levels of cross-linking, although changing the microorganism constriction, did not affect its viability. The obtained results confirm how this technology is a promising and a valid strategy to protect the microorganism viability and ensure its stability during the production process.

Cereals are becoming interesting substrates to be fermented to obtain new functional foods. For this reason, an enzymatic pretreatment of a wheat flour suspension using amylase was investigated in order to guarantee the feasibility to ferment a cereal‐based substrate at a solid content higher than that used in past experimentations. Trials with and without amylase pretreatment, using a 52% w/v wheat flour water suspension, were carried out to evaluate the fermentation feasibility; mixing tests with a food dye were performed to verify the suspension homogeneity. The pretreated suspension, whose starch was hydrolyzed for about 80% by α‐amylase, was then fermented (37°C, 24h) by Lactobacillus paracasei CBA‐L74. Starting from pH value 5.75, microbial concentration 1.89 × 106 CFU/ml and lactic acid 0 mg/L, final values of 3.93, 3 × 108 CFU/ml and 6,251 mg/L were found after 24 hr of fermentation. The untreated suspension went to gelation and was impossible to ferment because its consistency was like a dough and the mixing system was not suitable to ensure mixing. Practical applications The aim of the present study was the handling and the fermentation of cereal‐based substrate at high solid content (52% w/v), through a preliminary amylase pretreatment. The fermentation of such a solid content could guarantee the production of a greater quantity of solid fermented matrix and this could considerably reduce drying times with greater productivity at a low cost.

Studies of the ability of probiotics to ferment cereal flours are necessary to obtain products with enhanced nutritional value. In this study, Lactobacillus paracasei CBA-L74 was used to ferment cereal aqueous mixtures containing both oat (7.5% w/v) and rice flours (7.5% w/v), with and without glucose, to understand whether glucose addition could have any effect on growth and metabolism. Viability, pH, metabolites production during fermentation (24 h, 37 °C) and substrates reduction were analysed. The strain showed good growth in the cereal aqueous mixture both with and without glucose addition, but suspensions prepared with glucose showed the best results. A bacterial concentration of 7 log CFU mL −1 , a pH value of 4.70 and lactic acid production of 1250 mg L −1 were achieved when fermentation was performed without glucose addition, while in the presence of glucose, a t 24 bacterial growth of 8 log CFU mL −1 was reached, with a pH value of 3.11 and lactic acid production of 6050 mg L −1 .

The mathematical modeling of fermentation processes allows for the formulation of predictions about the kinetics of biomass growth and metabolite production as well as setting or verifying the best operative conditions in view of the economical convenience of the process. For this purpose, we performed a kinetic study of a rice flour fermentation process using Lactobacillus paracasei CBA L74 with and without pH control; the pH value was set to 5.8 under pH control. Monod, Logistic, and Contois models were proposed to describe the bacterial growth rate in both conditions. The best mathematical model, which was able to describe the experimental data obtained without pH control, was the Contois model, as the specific growth rate was influenced by both the glucose reduction (from 14.31 g/L to 10.22 g/L) and the biomass production (2 log growth) that occurred during fermentation. Conversely, when pH control was implemented, both Monod and Contois models satisfactorily described the specific growth rate trend. The estimated kinetic parameters confirmed that biomass production (2 log growth) and glucose consumption (from 14.31 g/L to 6.06 g/L) did not affect the microorganism’s growth capacity when the fermenting medium was maintained at an optimal pH. The lactic acid production rate described by the Luedeking–Piret model did not appear to be linked to growth in the absence of pH control while, on the other hand, this model was unsuitable for describing the experimental lactic acid concentration when pH control was applied. The kinetic modeling of lactic acid production and the percentage of added glucose in the protocol with controlled pH will be optimized in the future.