Oral administration of Lactobacillus casei Shirota can ameliorate the adverse effect of an acute aflatoxin exposure. - GreenMedInfo Summary

Aflatoxin B(AFB) is a toxic compound commonly found in some crops with an adverse health effect on human and animals. Some beneficial microorganisms (or probiotics) such as lactic acid bacteria have shown the ability to reduce the bioavailability of aflatoxins and its intestinal absorption. However, the dose and duration of aflatoxins exposure and probiotic treatment can influence the ability of probiotics to remove aflatoxins. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the efficacy of oral probioticShirota strain (LcS) induction in an acute exposure to AFBin rats. Experimentally, Sprague Dawley rats were divided into three groups: AFBonly (n = 9); AFBtreated with LcS (n = 9); and control (no AFBexposure) (n = 6) groups. The blood AFBlevel of rats treated with LcS was slightly lower than the untreated AFBinduced rats (11.12± 0.71 vs 10.93 ± 0.69 ng g). Also, LcS treatment slightly moderated the liver and kidney biomarkers in AFBinduced rats. However, a trend for a significant difference was only observed in ALT of AFBinduced rats treated with LcS compared to their counterparts (126.11± 36.90 vs 157.36 ± 15.46,= 0.06). Rats' body weight decreased in all animals force-fed with AFBwith no significant difference between LcS treatment compared to the counterpart. In conclusion, this experiment indicated that probiotic LsC was able to slightly ameliorate the adverse effect of an acute exposure to AFBin rats. However, future studies with longer probiotics treatment or higher probiotics dose is required to confirm these findings.