›› 2017, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (7): 2022-2032.doi: 10.16431/j.cnki.1671-7236.2017.07.018

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Research Progress on the Evaluation Methods of Safety and Efficacy of Probiotics

FENG Yuan-yuan, QIAO Lin, YAO Hong-ming, LIU Rui, JIE Lin-xia, GAO Chang-bin   

  1. Beijing Engineering and Technology Research Center of Feeding Probiotics, Beijing Engineering Laboratory of Probiotics Key Technology Development, Beijing Da Weijia Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Beijing 100085, China
  • Received:2016-12-10 Online:2017-07-20 Published:2017-07-22

Abstract:

Probiotics are live microorganisms. When they are administrated in adequate amounts, they can have beneficial effects on the host. They are widely applied in food fermentation and feed industry. With the appearance of commercial probiotics, more concerns are raised on the safety and efficacy evaluation of probiotics. At present, the evaluation of probiotics are mainly about the safety and efficacy, and both of them can be done in vivo and in vitro. When developing probiotic products, many companies rarely make a comprehensive safety evaluation of strains, and the evaluation index and methods used by various researchers from different countries are different. Besides, standards in efficacy evaluation of probiotics are not uniform either. In order to solve the problems of probiotics evaluation, it is necessary for evaluating the safety and effectiveness of the probiotics systematically and scientifically to establish a comprehensive evaluation method. From the aspects of potential harm and efficacy of probiotics, the authors summarizes recent developments in some aspects of safety evaluation in vitro including hemolytic, evaluation of virulence factors, antibiotic resistance and toxic metabolites-producing ability, in functional characteristics evaluation including resistance to acid and bile, tolerance to simulated gastrointestinal tract, adhesion capacity to gastrointestinal mucosa and epithelial cells, antimicrobial activity, and in safety and functional characteristics in vivo. The aim of this paper is to provide references to build a comprehensive technical system and standard of evaluation of probiotics.

Key words: probiotics; safety evaluation; efficacy evaluation; in vivo; in vitro

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