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Although gut diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, mucositis and the alimentary cancers share similar pathogenetic features, further investigation is required into new treatment modalities. An imbalance in the gut microbiota, breached gut integrity, bacterial invasion, increased cell apoptosis to proliferation ratio, inflammation and impaired immunity may all contribute to their pathogenesis. Probiotics are defined as live bacteria, which when administered in sufficient amounts, exert beneficial effects to the gastrointestinal tract. More recently, probiotic-derived factors including proteins and other molecules released from living probiotics, have also been shown to exert beneficial properties. In this review we address the potential for probiotics, with an emphasis on probiotic-derived factors, to reduce the severity of digestive diseases and further discuss the known mechanisms by which probiotics and probiotic-derived factors exert their physiological effects.

In this study, the e¡ects of three commonly used chemicals, dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO), ethylene glycol (EG), propylene glycol (PG) and their combinations with trehalose, were evaluated on the cryopreservation of Dlarvae of the blue mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis. The larvae were harvested 30 h post-fertilization at 21 1C and cryopreserved using a standard protocol in 5%, 10% or15% of DSMO, EG and PG either as single chemical solutions or in combination with 0.2 M trehalose. Among these cryoprotectants, 5% DMSO resulted in the highest post-thaw survival rate of 55.3 AE 7.8%, although it did not signi¢cantly di¡er from those with 10% and 15% EG. The addition of 0.2 M trehalose did not improve the post-thaw larval survival rates in all the combinations assessed. The cryo-e¡ects on subsequent development were evaluated using the D-larvae frozen with 5% DMSO. The results showed that cryopreservation a¡ected both larval survival and growth in this species. The relative daily mortality rate was sig-ni¢cantly higher in treated than control groups over the period from 3 h post-thaw to day 11 post-fertilization. On day 6 post-fertilization, the average larval length in the treated group was signi¢cantly smaller than that in the control. From day 11 post-fertilization, and onwards, di¡erences in these two traits were not signi¢cant between treated and control groups. On day 21 post-fertilization, about 80% of the larvae in both treated and control groups developed eyes and the normalized survival rate in the treated group was12.5%.

No abstract