At least 100 million patients in the USA and Canada have recurrent long-term gastrointestinal problems[i]. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death[ii]. Studies have shown that yogurt and other probiotic foods reduce the incidence of colorectal cancer and other gastro-intestinal diseases[iii]. However, bacterial cell efficacy is limited by its sensitivity to human gastrointestinal (GI) conditions. The main objective of this study is to design a novel probiotic yogurt based treatment containing microencapsulated Lactobacillus acidophilus bacterial cells capable of lowering the gastrointestinal inflammation by oral administration. Male C57BL/6J-Apc^Min/+ mice were separated into three experimental groups. The following biomarkers were investigated: IL-1, IL-6, IL-12, TNF-alpha, IgA, PGE2, CRP, IFN-gamma, Cox-2, thromboxane, fecal bile acids. There was an overall decreasing trend in concentration amounts of these markers in treatment groups. This indicates that an antiinflammatory state correlates with the beneficial effect of the probiotic on the involved immunomodulatory mechanisms. Histology study revealed decreased number of polyps by 44% in treated animals. The number of gastrointestinal intraepithelial neoplasias found in the colon was smaller than in a small intestine. There were no statistically significant changes within treatment groups. Among all the organs examined in this study there was only one malignant tumor (adenocarcinoma) found in the small intestine of animal from control group.
These results strongly suggest the use of microcapsules and yogurt for probiotic bacterial cell delivery that will have implications in colon cancer and other therapeutic use of probiotic bacterial.