Special Edition: Blood Sugar Management
Probiotics
Pre-clinical and clinical trials are increasingly being published to support potential metabolic benefits for probiotics. Results of a 2013 study with lab mice, published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry (Vol. 288, pp. 25088-25097), found that daily consumption of the VSL#3 commercial probiotic product increased levels of the short chain fatty acid (SCFA), butyrate, which in turn stimulated the release of the appetite-suppressing hormone GLP-1 and reduced food intake and improved glucose tolerance in lab mice.
A 2015 rat study used an engineered a strain of lactobacillus to increase secretion GLP-1 – a hormone that increases the release of insulin and has been shown to stimulate the conversion of both rat and human intestinal epithelial cells into insulin-secreting cells. The GLP-1 secreting probiotic was then given orally to diabetic rats for 90 days, while control rats received the normal lactobacillus strain. The team found the diabetic rats receiving the engineered probiotic had up to 30% lower incidence of high blood glucose, a hallmark of diabetes (Diabetes, 2015, Vol. 64. No. 5, pp. 1794-1803).
Probiotic supplier Chr. Hansen teamed up with Caelus Health to focus on the development of Eubacterium hallii as a next generation probiotic for prevention and treatment of metabolic disease.
Of particular interest is Caelus Health’s lead bacterial strain CP-001. This patented species is a formulation of E. hallii and is currently going through a first phase clinical study investigating its role in insulin resistance.
The E. hallii-based product is the first in a series of microbiome-based products the two organisations plan to market.
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