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Effects of prebiotics on immune system and cytokine expression

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Abstract

Nowadays, use of prebiotics as feed and food additives has received increasing interest because of the beneficial effects of prebiotics on the health of animals and humans. One of the beneficial effects of prebiotics is stimulation of immune system, which can be direct or indirect through increasing population of beneficial microbes or probiotics, especially lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria, in the gut. An important mechanism of action of probiotics and prebiotics, by which they can affect the immune system, is changing the expression of cytokines. The present review tried to summarize the findings of studies that investigated the effects of prebiotics on immune system with focusing on their effects on cytokine expression. Generally, most of reviewed studies indicated beneficial effects for prebiotics in terms of improving immune system, by increasing the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines, while reducing the expressions of proinflammatory cytokines. However, most of studies mainly considered the indirect effects of prebiotics on the immune system (through changing the composition and population of gut microbiota), and their direct effects still need to be further studied using prebiotics with different degree of polymerization in different hosts.

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Acknowledgments

The present study was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia under the LRGS Fasa 1/2012 grant, UPM/700-1/3/LRGS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Malaysia

    Parisa Shokryazdan, Mohammad Faseleh Jahromi & Juan Boo Liang

  2. Agriculture Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII), East and North-East Branch, P.O.B. 91735 844, Mashhad, Iran

    Mohammad Faseleh Jahromi

  3. Department of Animal Science, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran

    Bahman Navidshad

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  1. Parisa Shokryazdan
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  2. Mohammad Faseleh Jahromi
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Correspondence to Juan Boo Liang.

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Shokryazdan, P., Faseleh Jahromi, M., Navidshad, B. et al. Effects of prebiotics on immune system and cytokine expression. Med Microbiol Immunol 206, 1–9 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00430-016-0481-y

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