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Probiotics as potential therapeutic options for Alzheimer’s disease

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Abstract

The steadily increasing prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) worldwide and the lack of effective therapeutic agent attract novel therapeutic approach in recent years. In view of the close relationships between gut microbiota and AD, probiotics have been suggested as potential therapeutic options for AD in recent years. The present review discussed the research progresses concerning the effects of probiotics administration to combat AD. A total of 35 studies, including 26 animal model studies and 9 human studies, were included herein. Among the 26 animal model studies, 24 used mice model, and 2 used Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster AD models, respectively. As for probiotics, a total of 13 studies employed single-strain probiotic, and the rest studies used multi-strain probiotics (ranged from 2 to 9 probiotic strains), 4 used probiotic-fermented milk or probiotic-fermented soybean, 2 studies used engineered probiotic strain, and 4 studies focused on the combined effect of probiotics with AD drug memantine, selenium, or exercise. Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus species were the most frequently used probiotics in the included studies. Overall, currently available studies showed that probiotic administration conferred neuroprotective benefits and could attenuate cognitive deficits and modulate gut microbiota dysbiosis, which may be related to oxidative and inflammatory pathways. Several perspectives on future studies on this topic are proposed. Thus, probiotics seem to be an attractive approach to combat AD, which deserves to be further studied by well-designed large-scale clinical studies.

Key points

•We discussed the recent progresses concerning the effects of probiotics administration to combat AD.

•A total of 35 associated studies consisted of 26 animal model studies and 9 human studies were included.

•Most studies found that probiotic administration conferred neuroprotective benefits and could attenuate cognitive deficits.

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Funding

This work was supported by the University Youth Innovation Team of Shandong Province (Grant No. 2019KJK017), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. ZR2019MH020), and Talent Program of Zibo.

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  1. Institute of Biomedical Research, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, Shandong, People’s Republic of China

    Hong-Fang Ji & Liang Shen

  2. Shandong Provincial Research Center for Bioinformatic Engineering and Technique, Zibo Key Laboratory of New Drug Development of Neurodegenerative Diseases, School of Life Sciences, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, Shandong, People’s Republic of China

    Hong-Fang Ji & Liang Shen

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  1. Hong-Fang Ji
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HFJ and LS designed the manuscript. HFJ and LS collected data. HFJ and LS wrote and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hong-Fang Ji or Liang Shen.

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Ji, HF., Shen, L. Probiotics as potential therapeutic options for Alzheimer’s disease. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 105, 7721–7730 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-021-11607-1

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