1 Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health , School of Medicine, UC San Diego, La Jolla, California.
2 Tumor Microenvironment and Cancer Immunology Program, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute , La Jolla, California.
J Altern Complement Med. 2018 Jul;24(7):656-665. doi: 10.1089/acm.2017.0422. Epub 2018 Mar 22.
The prebiotic potential of herbal medicines has been scarcely studied.
The authors therefore used anaerobic human fecal cultivation to investigate whether three herbal medicines commonly used in gastrointestinal health and disease in Ayurveda alter the growth and abundance of specific bacterial species.
Profiling of cultures supplemented with Glycyrrhiza glabra, Ulmus rubra, or triphala formulation by 16S rDNA sequencing revealed profound changes in diverse taxa in human gut microbiota. Principal coordinate analysis highlights that each herbal medicine drives the formation of unique microbial communities. The relative abundance of approximately one-third of the 299 species profiled was altered by all 3 medicines, whereas additional species displayed herb-specific alterations. Herb supplementation increased the abundance of many bacteria known to promote human health, including Bifidobacterium spp., Lactobacillus spp., and Bacteroides spp. Herb supplementation resulted in the reduced relative abundance of many species, including potential pathogens such as Citrobacter freundii and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Herbal medicines induced blooms of butyrate- and propionate-producing species. U. rubra and triphala significantly increased the relative abundance of butyrate-producing bacteria, whereas G. glabra induced the largest increase in propionate-producing species. To achieve greater insight into the mechanisms through which herbal medicines alter microbial communities, the authors assessed the shifts in abundance of glycosyl hydrolase families induced by each herbal medicine. Herb supplementation, particularly G. glabra, significantly increased the representation and potential expression of several glycosyl hydrolase families.
These studies are novel in highlighting the significant prebiotic potential of medicinal herbs and suggest that the health benefits of these herbs are due, at least in part, to their ability to modulate the gut microbiota in a manner predicted to improve colonic epithelium function, reduce inflammation, and protect from opportunistic infection. Forthcoming studies in human clinical trials will test the concordance of the results generated in vitro and the predictions made by genome analyses.
草药的益生元潜力尚未得到充分研究。
因此，作者使用厌氧人体粪便培养来研究三种常用于阿育吠陀治疗胃肠道健康和疾病的草药是否会改变特定细菌物种的生长和丰度。
通过 16S rDNA 测序对补充甘草、榆树皮或三果配方的培养物进行分析，揭示了人类肠道微生物群中多种分类群的深刻变化。主坐标分析突出显示每种草药都驱动独特微生物群落的形成。约三分之一被分析的 299 个物种的相对丰度被所有 3 种草药改变，而其他物种则表现出特定草药的改变。草药补充增加了许多已知促进人类健康的细菌的丰度，包括双歧杆菌、乳杆菌和拟杆菌。草药补充导致许多物种的相对丰度降低，包括潜在的病原体，如柠檬酸杆菌和肺炎克雷伯菌。草药诱导丁酸和丙酸产生物种的繁荣。榆树皮和三果显著增加了丁酸产生菌的相对丰度，而甘草则诱导了产生丙酸的物种的最大增加。为了更深入地了解草药改变微生物群落的机制，作者评估了每种草药引起的糖苷水解酶家族丰度的变化。草药补充，特别是甘草，显著增加了几种糖苷水解酶家族的代表性和潜在表达。
这些研究的新颖之处在于强调了药用草药的显著益生元潜力，并表明这些草药的健康益处至少部分归因于它们调节肠道微生物群的能力，以改善结肠上皮功能、减少炎症和防止机会性感染的方式。即将进行的人类临床试验将测试体外产生的结果与基因组分析的预测之间的一致性。
