New Delhi, May 7 (IANS) An Indian-origin researcher in the US has developed a probiotic cocktail that will help prevent dementia — a condition that affects memory, thinking, and the ability to perform daily activities of more than 57 million people worldwide.
The cocktail, developed by Hariom Yadav from the University of South Florida, is a unique blend of probiotics that can positively impact the microbiome — the unseen community of microorganisms that live by the trillions in a person’s gut.
While in healthy individuals, the microorganisms live harmoniously in their vast internal community, the gut also can become populated with certain bacteria and viruses.
This can cause disruptions throughout the body, ultimately triggering a progression over time that contributes to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease — the most common cause of dementia.
The probiotic cocktail, detailed in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest that the concoction could become a novel therapy to help lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
In the study, the team mixed the cocktail in mice’s drinking water for 16 weeks and then subjected them to a “water maze” test. The mice were given visual cues to help them swim to a hidden underwater platform.
The findings showed that the cocktail-drinking mice were consistently able to find the platform faster.
The cocktail also reduced the levels of proteins that can cause the build-up of sticky plaques in the brain. It appeared to lower levels of brain inflammation and preserve tight junctions in the blood-brain barrier — preventing leakage of harmful microorganisms into the brain.
The results suggest that this probiotics mixture could decrease the progression of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers said.
“Normally, people look at some single-strand probiotics. But we discovered that when they are put together as a consortia, they actually have more power for manipulating microbiomes, switching them from the bad side to the good side,” Yadav said.
The probiotic cocktail serves to decrease inflammatory bacteria in the gut, effectively suppressing that population. Yadav and his team are currently working on commercialising the cocktail, in contact with various companies to potentially bring it to market.
–IANS
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