Screening Potential Probiotics Against Obesity and Metabolism Abnormalities in the Elderly

With the progress in the nutrition and medicinal science, the life-expectancy of the peoples has significantly increased in the both of developed and developing countries, and the ageingAgeing is undergoing rather than expected. AgeingAgeing is also deeply associated with increased susceptibility to degenerative or infectious diseases. The industrialized societies are suffering from dynamically increasing cost and spending for health care and medical treatment of their senior citizens. The growing scientific evidences have well suggested that ageingAgeing can alter the intestinal microbiota qualitatively and quantitatively, generating a different microbe community with the ageAge characterized structure. These ageingAgeing related gutGut microbiotaGut microbiota will directly or indirectly abnormalize physiological metabolisms of middle and elderly people and have been considered as the risk to cause obesity and metabolic diseases. Therefore, screening new anti-obesity probioticsProbiotics to maintain the health of the intestinal microbiota of middle-aged and elderly people will help them to prevent or alleviate various metabolic diseases related to obesity and might be a practical method to promote the middle-aged and elderly people. In this chapter, two testing models, the combination of macrophage and adipocyte and fecal culture, were suggested to evaluate /or screen the probioticsProbiotics strains with anti-obesity effects. With these testing models, some selected probioticsProbiotics strains such as LactobacillusLactobacillus GG and Bifidoacterium bifidum TMC3115 exhibited its strain dependent abilities to activate macrophages by which to inhibit the adipogenic differentiation of preadipocytes, indicating that these may mediate the host immune response and affect their fat metabolism function. The results from fecal culture model indicate that the modification of the composition and function of intestinal microbiota might be one of the underlying mechanisms by which these bacteria could express the anti-obesity effects. Such anti-obesity effects have also been demonstrated with animal and human studies, at least partly. These results indicate that there might be deep association between intestinal microbiota and health of the elderly and some intestinal microbes, might play important role in the development of obesity and metabolisms.