Adhesion of Dairy Propionibacteria to Intestinal Epithelial Tissue In Vitro and In Vivo

Abstract

Adhesion to the intestinal mucosa is a desirable property for probiotic microorganisms and has been related to many of their health benefits. In the present study, 24 dairy Propionibacterium strains were assessed with regard to their hydrophobic characteristics and their autoaggregation and hemagglutination abilities, since these traits have been shown to be indicative of adherence in other microorganisms. Six strains were further tested for their capacity to adhere to ileal epithelial cells in vitro and in vivo. The results of the study showed that propionibacteria were highly hydrophilic, and hemagglutination and autoaggregation were properties not commonly found among these microorganisms. No relationship was found between surface characteristics and adhesion ability, since hemagglutinating, autoaggregating, and nonautoaggregating bacteria were able to adhere to intestinal cells both in vitro and in vivo. Microscopic examination revealed that autoaggregating cells adhered in clusters, with adhesion being mediated by only a few bacteria, whereas the hemagglutinating and nonautoaggregating strains adhered individually or in small groups making contact with each epithelial cell with the entire bacterial surface. The in vitro assessment of adhesion was a good indication of the in vivo association of propionibacteria with the intestinal epithelium. Therefore, the in vitro method presented here should be valuable in screening routinely adhesive properties of propionibacteria for probiotic purposes. The adhesion ability of dairy propionibacteria would prolong their maintenance in the gut and increase the duration of their provision of beneficial effects in the host, supporting the potential of Propionibacterium in the development of new probiotic products.

Novel isolates of lactobacilli from fermented Portuguese olive as potential probiotics

“…Analysis of these results, one concludes that there is no correlation between auto-aggregation and hydrophobicity, also found by others using xylene (Zárate, Morata de Ambrosini, Chaia, & González, 2002) e but not by Darilmaz, Beyatli, and Yuksekdah (2012). However, the values obtained for the strains tested (except FF28 strain) were higher than those found for LCS strains, in agreement with previously reported values (Kiely & Olson, 2000).…”

“…Transient adhesion and colonization of probiotics is thus to be determined in vivo, although a clear correlation between in vitro and in vivo adhesion has been reported for six strains of propionic bacteria using experimental animals (Zárate et al, 2002).…”

Dairy Propionibacteria: Less Conventional Probiotics to Improve the Human and Animal Health

“…Microscopic examination revealed two adhesion patterns in propionibacteria: autoaggregating strains adhere in clusters, with adhesion being mediated by only a few bacteria, whereas nonautoaggregating propionibacteria adhere individually making contact with each epithelial cell with the entire bacterial surface [140].…”

“…Dairy propionibacteria have demonstrated to adhere to immobilized mucus [139]; to isolated mouse intestinal epithelial cells [140,141], to human intestinal cell lines [142][143][144] and in vivo to intestinal cells as was assessed by counting the adhering propionibacteria on the mucosa by a plate count method [124,125,137,145].…”

Colonic infusion with Propionibacterium acidipropionici reduces severity of chemically-induced colitis in rats

“…Indeed, Propionibacterium freudenreichii is able to stimulate the growth of bifidobacteria in vitro [15,29] and some selected strains partially survive during their transit in the human gut and display bifidogenic activity [5,12]. Propionibacterium acidipropionici CRL 1198 is able to survive in mice intestine, adhering to the epithelium, and induces positive effects on lipid metabolism, on intestinal flora activity [35,36,48] and on immune response [2,27,35].…”