By Prof. Gabriel Vinderola, PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering from the National University of Litoral and Principal Researcher from CONICET at Dairy Products Institute (CONICET-UNL), Santa Fe, Argentina In December 2017, at the 39th session of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) in […]
By Prof. Seppo Salminen, Director of Functional Foods Forum, University of Turku, Turku, Finland Can locally produced probiotic yogurt be a way to increase the health and wealth of people in resource-poor areas of Uganda? Recently Dr. Nieke Westerik, a researcher from the Netherlands, partnered with a local Ugandan team to explore a yogurt production […]
By Ravi Mangal Patel, MD, Msc, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. rmpatel@nullemory.edu Twitter: @ravimpatelmd Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is one of the most lethal neonatal diseases, yet most people have never heard about it. The disease primarily affects preterm infants and is characterized by the development of […]
This month, ISAPP board member and former president Professor Colin Hill received a prestigious award from University College Cork (Ireland), where he has worked since 1992: The UCC Career Achievement Research Award. The prize honours leading researchers whose influential work has been recognized globally. Hill’s research interests lie in molecular microbiology—specifically, issues around infection. His […]
By Dr. Gabriel Vinderola, PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering from the National University of Litoral and Principal Researcher from CONICET at Dairy Products Institute (CONICET-UNL), Santa Fe, Argentina Fermented foods and beverages such as yogurt, wine, beer, kefir, kombucha, kimchi, and miso are created with the help of microbes. […]
For thousands of years, cultures across the globe have been consuming fermented foods, many of which contain diverse and numerous live microbes. Yet scientists are still puzzling over whether a greater intake of live microbes results in measurably better health. As part of long-term efforts to understand evidence for the health benefits of live dietary […]
By Mary Ellen Sanders, PhD, ISAPP Executive Science Officer Human intervention studies in the fields of probiotics and prebiotics assess the health effects of these ingredients, whether it’s improving specific symptoms or preventing the occurrence of a health condition. Yet scientists in the field recognize the importance of learning the ‘chain of events’ by which […]
By Prof. Sarah Lebeer, Research Professor in Microbiology and Molecular Biology, Department of Bioscience Engineering, University of Antwerp, Belgium Lactobacilli are a very important group of bacteria that live on the human body and in many other environments on Earth. They have been linked to human health for more than 100 years already, but mainly […]
By now, hundreds of scientific articles show the differences in gut microbiota composition and function between states of health and disease, leading to the idea that gut microbiota modulation is a promising way to achieve better health. But in practice, changing the complex community of microbes in the gut has proved challenging—the gut microbiota of […]
For meeting the nutritional needs of infants and supporting early development, human milk is the ideal food—and this is reflected in breastfeeding guidelines around the world, including the World Health Organization’s recommendation that babies receive human milk exclusively for the first six months of life and that breastfeeding be continued, along with complementary foods, up […]
By Drs. Karen Scott, University of Aberdeen, and Sarah Lebeer, University of Antwerp As part of the ISAPP virtual annual meeting 2020, around 85 members of the ISAPP community joined us in a Zoom discussion forum to discuss the topic: “Do our resident microbes help protect against viral infections?” A scientific perspective on this topic […]
By Karen Scott, Mary Ellen Sanders, Kelly Swanson, Glenn Gibson, and Bob Hutkins When Glenn Gibson and Marcel Roberfroid first introduced the prebiotic concept in 1995, they also conceived that prebiotics could be combined with probiotics to form synbiotics. In 2011, Gibson and Kolida described additional criteria for defining synbiotics and proposed that synbiotics could […]
By Prof. Gabriel Vinderola PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering from the National University of Litoral and Principal Researcher from CONICET at Dairy Products Institute (CONICET-UNL), Santa Fe, Argentina On February 8, 2019, within the framework of the X Workshop of the Spanish Society for Microbiota, Probiotics and Prebiotics (SEMiPyP), […]
This webinar is now complete — see the recorded version here. New probiotic and prebiotic trials are published all the time – but when they show a health benefit, what do we know about the basic science behind it? To provide insight into this topic, ISAPP has partnered with the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) […]
Por Gabriel Vinderola, Dr. en Química, Investigador Principal del Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicos y Técnicas (CONICET) en el Instituto de Lactología Industrial (INLAIN, CONICET-UNL) y Profesor Asociado de la Facultad de Ingeniería Química de la Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Como docente-investigador, la mayor parte del tiempo se comparte con personas del ambito académico y […]
By Prof. Gabriel Vinderola PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering from the National University of Litoral and Principal Researcher from CONICET at Dairy Products Institute (CONICET-UNL), Santa Fe, Argentina See the Spanish version of this blog post here. As a professor, most of my days are spent with people from […]
By Bruno Pot, PhD, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Mary Ellen Sanders, PhD, Executive Science Officer, ISAPP On July 2nd, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published the 12th update of the qualified presumption of safety (QPS) list, a list of safe biological agents, recommended for intentional addition to food or feed, covering notifications from October […]
Although the international scientific consensus definition of probiotics, published in 2014, is well known—”live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host”—the word is often used incorrectly in practice. A recent article published in Frontiers in Microbiology builds on this definition and describes four criteria for accurate use of […]
By Mary Ellen Sanders, PhD, ISAPP Executive Science Officer Close to two years ago, a team convened by ISAPP conducted a meta-analysis showing that probiotics may reduce number of antibiotic prescriptions, with evidence primarily in children (ISAPP-initiated systematic review and meta-analysis shows the association of probiotic consumption with reduced antibiotic prescriptions). A recent study suggests […]
By Mariya Petrova, PhD, Microbiome insights and Probiotics Consultancy, Karlovo, Bulgaria Family and family traditions are very important to me. Some of you may have seen my previous blog post on fermented food and my father’s tradition of making fermented cabbage and vegetables every autumn. Of course, this is not limited to my family – in […]
By Irina Spacova, ISAPP-SFA 2019 President and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Antwerp, Belgium Early career scientists play a vital and dynamic role in research, especially in environments supporting their enthusiasm and drive for innovation. ISAPP has long been promoting young researchers through its Students and Fellows Association (ISAPP-SFA), which is a student-led branch […]
By Mary Ellen Sanders, PhD, ISAPP Executive Science Officer On June 28, 60 Minutes aired a 13-minute segment about probiotics titled, “Do Probiotics Actually Do Anything?” Unfortunately the media segment did not provide listeners with a nuanced perspective. ‘Probiotics’ were treated as if they were one entity, ignoring the best approach to addressing the topic […]
By Kelly S. Swanson, PhD, The Kraft Heinz Company Endowed Professor in Human Nutrition, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Pet dogs and cats are cherished companions. In developed countries, many households with pets treat them like family members. Similarly to humans, a high level of nutrition and veterinary care promotes health and longevity. As people […]
ISAPP’s series of six English-language videos are a useful resource for helping consumers answer important questions about probiotics, prebiotics, and fermented foods. In order to make these popular educational videos accessible to a wider global audience, ISAPP has now updated them with subtitles in multiple languages: Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. […]
By ISAPP Board of Directors June 15, 2020 The recent American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Clinical Practice Guidelines on the Role of Probiotics in the Management of Gastrointestinal Disorders provided the AGA’s assessment of evidence. Considering these AGA recommendations for probiotics to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and C. difficile infection, all hospital formularies should stock at […]
