School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, India.
Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India.
Curr Drug Metab. 2022;23(2):90-98. doi: 10.2174/1389200223666220211095024.
Metabiotics have emerged as the safer alternatives to probiotics in last decade. Unlike probiotics that are live microbes, metabiotics are the low molecular weight bioactive metabolites produced by the gut microbiota. While offering a similar profile of health benefits as that of probiotics, metabiotics are free from the risks and uncertain responses associated with administration of live bacteria into the body. Metabiotics have demonstrated substantial effectiveness across the ethnicities, age, gender and nutritional habits in a number of metabolic disorders, including obesity. Obesity is attributed to the offsetting of the energy homeostasis of the body due to a number of genetic, endocrinological, and environmental factors leading to obesity. The obesogenic mechanisms are quite complicated as they result from a complex interplay among a number of factors. Owing to a variety of constituents exerting their action through different pathways, metabiotics offer a pragmatic option for treatment as well as prevention of obesity by addressing heterogeneous aspects of its aetiology. In this review, we categorize various components of metabiotics and discuss their cross-talk with host cells at the molecular level. We also discuss the challenges in understanding these interactions and their potential effects on obesity treatment and prevention strategies. Considering the alarming rise in obesity all over the world, metabiotics offer an attractive non-pharmacological approach to spearhead the strategies being designed to combat the challenges posed by the obesity epidemic.
在过去十年中，后生元已成为益生菌的更安全替代品。与益生菌是活微生物不同，后生元是肠道微生物群产生的低分子量生物活性代谢物。后生元提供了与益生菌相似的健康益处，但没有将活细菌注入体内相关的风险和不确定反应。后生元在多种代谢紊乱中，包括肥胖症，在不同种族、年龄、性别和饮食习惯中都显示出了显著的效果。肥胖是由于多种遗传、内分泌和环境因素导致身体能量平衡失调而引起的。致肥胖机制非常复杂，因为它们是多种因素复杂相互作用的结果。由于各种成分通过不同途径发挥作用，后生元通过解决其病因学的异质方面，为肥胖症的治疗和预防提供了一种实用的选择。在这篇综述中，我们将后生元的各种成分进行分类，并讨论它们在分子水平上与宿主细胞的相互作用。我们还讨论了理解这些相互作用及其对肥胖症治疗和预防策略的潜在影响所面临的挑战。考虑到肥胖症在全球范围内的惊人增长，后生元为非药物治疗提供了一种有吸引力的方法，可以引领旨在应对肥胖症流行所带来挑战的策略。
