According to a recently published study, a probiotic treatment has mitigated pancreatitis in an animal model. This leads to a new hypothesis of how probiotic's may act. “Severe acute pancreatitis is a critical illness that is characterized by intestinal barrier dysfunction. While it is usually self-limiting, in 20% - 30% of cases patients develop serious disease, including systemic inflammatory response syndrome, sepsis, and/or multiple organ dysfunction, which frequently cause death,” says the study.
The study was conducted by Jacoline Gerritsen, of University Medical Center, Utrecht, the Netherlands, together with her collaborators. The team gave one group of rats probiotic on a daily basis, starting 5 days before they induced acute pancreatitis, while another set of rats received a placebo.
It turned out that in the small intestine, "commensal rat ileum bacterium" (CRIB) were “correlated with reduced severity of acute pancreatitis in animals that had been fed probiotic," according to the report. "...these results suggest that effects of this multi-species probiotic mixture... are mediated by stimulation of a not previously described gut commensal bacterium... which protects the host from severe sepsis.”
"This research has provided new knowledge on the possible mechanisms behind probiotic action," says Gerritsen. "In addition, it shows that bacterial species inhabiting the small intestine might be very important for health. Up until now, medical researchers have neglected the small intestine, because it is very difficult to obtain such samples from humans."
Source: The Journal Of The American Society For Microbiology
It's good that they found out about this so that they can come up with a remedy. You'd be surprised with how much disorders there are nowadays; back then, there was only the flu.
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