A BENEO-Orafti Newsletter - Spring 2008 - Nr. 18:
Prebiotics and healthy ageing

Interview

How can the consumption of prebiotics help people to maintain their health as they age?

There is enough evidence to show that consumption of prebiotic inulin and oligofructose offers benefits to health as people age, e.g. improved immune function, less constipation, better calcium bioavailability. However, we cannot be sure of the exact mechanisms. Prebiotics represent a new foodstuff for the gut microbiota. It would be interesting to carry out further investigations using combinations of metagenomics and microbiota analysis by pyrosequencing and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to discover how exactly the types and amounts of microbiota change during supplementation with inulin and oligofructose.

Would prebiotic supplementation need to be aligned with dietary changes?

From a claims perspective, it is important for manufacturers of prebiotics to demonstrate that their products work in the absence of dietary changes. This ensures that there is a genuine effect. However, when advice is translated to public health, prebiotics should be set in context with a healthy diet containing plenty of fibre, fruit and vegetables. Most of the research on prebiotics has been done on subjects with stable diets. It would be interesting to combine a healthy diet with prebiotics to discover if this amplifies the beneficial effects.

Ley RE, Turnbaugh PJ, Klein S, Gordon JI (2006). Microbial ecology: human gut microbes associated with obesity. Nature 444: 1022-1023..

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