June 10, 2014

ISAPP’s consensus statement on the scope and appropriate use of the term probiotic was published today in Nature Reviews in Gastroenterology and Hepatology. The paper is open access. Key conclusions of the paper include that with minor edits, the 13-year old FAO/WHO definition of probiotic was endorsed; that sufficient evidence from human studies on commonly studied probiotic species allows use of the term ‘probiotic’ at a species-, not strain-, level; and undefined consortia of microbes such as those used for fecal microbial transplants do not fall under the scope of probiotics. The panel of experts comprised 12 internationally recognized scientists and the paper was endorsed by the ISAPP board of directors.