Do bacterial combinations result in enhanced cytokine production?
Probiotic bacteria, defined as living microorganisms that have beneficial effects on human health, have been used for the prevention and treatment of a diverse range of disorders. However, the ways in which probiotic bacteria elicit their health effects are not fully understood. One of the action mechanisms could be the ability to induce cytokines that further regulate innate and adaptive immune responses. At present there is only a limited amount of comparative data available on the ability of different probiotic strains to induce cytokine responses within the same experimental system. In addition, the effect of probiotic bacterial combinations on cytokine production in vitro is not well documented although bacterial combinations have been used in many clinical trials. A recent study revealed that probiotic bacteria seem to direct immune responses to either a Th1 type or in anti-inflammatory way in a bacterial genera-specific manner in human leukocyte cell culture. Not all bacterial c
