Probiotic Supplementation Increase Monocyte’s Function and Maintain Gut Microbiota Alpha Diversity of Marathon Runners

Presented by: Edgar Tavares-Silva

View Abstract

Background

After prolonged physical exercise, the immunological response of athletes could be impaired. Recently, the relationship between the intestinal microbiota and the immunological response has been postulated. Thus, we investigated whether probiotic supplementation modulates athlete’s intestinal microbiota and the immune response before and after a marathon race.

Materials and Methods
Marathon athletes (n=30) were allocated into placebo (maltodextrin 5g) or probiotic (10×109 CFU of Lactobacillus acidophilus LA-G80 and 10×109 CFU of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis BL-G101) and received a double-blind supplementation for thirty days. Before the supplementation period (Baseline) and 24 hours before the race (24h-Pre), faeces were collected to analyze microbiota Alpha diversity. Blood was collected at four different times (Baseline, 24h-Pre, 1h-Post and five days after the race) to analyze monocyte’s function and plasma cytokine. For ten days after the marathon race, athletes answered a checklist about symptoms of URTI. Bacterial genetic sequencing was based on the V3-V4 regions of rRNA 16S following Illumina’s MiSeq platform system and visualization by Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology – QIIME. The data normality was verified using the Shapiro-Wilk test, and the Anova Two-Way applied with a significance level of p ≤ 5% for immune response.

Results
The probiotic group significantly increased the phagocytosis rate after thirty days of probiotic supplementation. The production of hydrogen peroxide and cytokines by monocytes did not differ between the groups. After the marathon race, plasma IL-10 increase and five days after, plasma IL-15 increase and plasma IL-8 decrease in both groups. The microbiota Alpha diversity does not differ between groups by the rarefaction curves measured by the Shannon Index and Observed OTUS Enrichment with the saturation of 1.860 16S rRNA sequences in each sample. The uniformity between the groups and moments verified through the Pielou Evenness index did not differ between the placebo and probiotic groups. The symptoms and severity of URTI were not different between groups.

Conclusions
Supplementation of 10×109 CFU of Lactobacillus acidophilus LA-G80 and 10×109 CFU of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis BL-G101 for thirty days was not sufficient to modify the microbiota Alpha diversity of marathon athletes and did not modify symptom parameters of opportunistic infections in the upper respiratory tract. However, probiotic supplementation was able to modulate the cellular response of monocytes, with a significant increase in phagocytosis rate after the supplementation period. Different studies have demonstrated the efficiency of probiotic supplementation on the immunological response and intestinal microbiota modulation in recent years. We believe it is necessary to investigate different doses and supplementation time for this specific population of marathon runners.

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