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Review
. 2022 Nov 4;12(11):1640.
doi: 10.3390/biom12111640.

Postbiotics and Their Health Modulatory Biomolecules

Emma Scott  1 , Kim De Paepe  1 , Tom Van de Wiele  1
Affiliations
Review

Postbiotics and Their Health Modulatory Biomolecules

Emma Scott et al. Biomolecules. .

Abstract

Postbiotics are a new category of biotics that have the potential to confer health benefits but, unlike probiotics, do not require living cells to induce health effects and thus are not subject to the food safety requirements that apply to live microorganisms. Postbiotics are defined as a "preparation of inanimate microorganisms and/or their components that confers a health benefit on the host". Postbiotic components include short-chain fatty acids, exopolysaccharides, vitamins, teichoic acids, bacteriocins, enzymes and peptides in a non-purified inactivated cell preparation. While research into postbiotics is in its infancy, there is increasing evidence that postbiotics have the potential to modulate human health. Specifically, a number of postbiotics have been shown to improve gut health by strengthening the gut barrier, reducing inflammation and promoting antimicrobial activity against gut pathogens. Additionally, research is being conducted into the potential application of postbiotics to other areas of the body, including the skin, vagina and oral cavity. The purpose of this review is to set out the current research on postbiotics, demonstrate how postbiotics are currently used in commercial products and identify a number of knowledge gaps where further research is needed to identify the potential for future applications of postbiotics.

Keywords: SCFAs; antioxidant; bacteriocins; butyrate; epithelial barrier; exopolysaccharides; gut health; microbiome; postbiotics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the writing of the manuscript.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Metabolic routes for butyrate and propionate formation by representative bacterial genera and species from the human colon. Species shown in purple can utilise lactate to form butyrate; species shown in blue and green can, respectively, utilise lactate and succinate to produce proprionate. DHAP, dihydroxyacetonephosphate; PEP, phosphoenolpyruvate. Figure reprinted from Flint, Duncan et al., 2015 [23].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Arrangement of intestinal epithelial cells and intercellular junctions between epithelial cells. The apical junctions are composed of tight junctions and adherens junctions. Figure reprinted from Zhu, Sun and Du. 2018 [40].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Host gene expression and microbial shifts across the spectrum of ileal IBD. Figure reprinted from Haberman, Tickle et al., 2014 [58].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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