Maternal Intake of Probiotics to Program Offspring Health

Abstract

Purpose of review: Probiotics intake may be considered beneficial by prospective and pregnant mothers, but their effects on offspring development are incompletely understood. The purpose of this review was to examine recent pre-clinical and clinical studies to understand how maternal probiotics exposure affects offspring health outcomes.

Recent findings: Effects were investigated in the context of supporting offspring growth, intestinal health, and gut microbiota, preventing allergic diseases, supporting neurodevelopment, and preventing metabolic disorders in pre-clinical and clinical studies. Most human studies focused on infancy outcomes, whereas pre-clinical studies also examined outcomes at adolescence and young adulthood. While still understudied, both pre-clinical and clinical studies propose epigenetic modifications as an underlying mechanism. Optimal timing of intervention remains unclear. Administration of selected probiotics to mothers has programming potential for sustaining life-long health of offspring. Administration protocols, specific windows of susceptibility, and individual-specific responses need to be further studied.

Keywords: Developmental Origins of Health and Disease; Epigenetics; Gut microbiota; Human; Infant; Mouse; Nutritional programming; Pig; Pregnancy; Probiotics; Rabbit; Rat; Sex.

Fig. 1

Offspring health outcomes programmed by maternal probiotic intake started prenatally. Previous knowledge (until 2017) included growth, gut health and intestinal barrier, allergic diseases, and gut microbiota findings. In addition to these outcomes, recent studies described effects on metabolic disorders, and neurodevelopment and anxiety. Clinical and pre-clinical findings are indicated in bold and italics, respectively. Icons depict findings assessed in infants or animal models (mice, rats, rabbits, or pigs). Created with BioRender.com