Scientists believe that probiotics may have a potential slimming effect, in addition to their other health benefits.
Professor Arne Astrup and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, say that gut flora are important in weight management.
“With excess body weight a growing problem around the world, weight management is indisputably a major health issue today,” says Professor Astrup. “This project will significantly improve our understanding of the bacterial intestinal flora’s importance in individual weight management.”
The team are investigating the use of probiotics for weight control alongside experts from the Danish biotech company Chr Hansen, in a research project called “Prosat”.
So far, they have found that specific derivatives from probiotics can lead to feelings of satiety, or fullness, which they expect would lead to reduced food intake and a lower chance of becoming overweight or obese.
If this effect is confirmed by further research, “consumers around the world will have a groundbreaking new, documented means to help them maintain a healthy weight balance”, says Professor Astrup.
The probiotics could be added to food or developed into supplements, say the team. These products would then be available to the general population, particularly marketed at slightly overweight individuals.
They are now being tested using animals, explains Professor Jens Juul Holst. “This project makes use of a unique and sophisticated animal model to study satiety parameters,” he says.
“One possible mechanism of action for satiating probiotics is that they may cause a release of satiety inducing hormones from the gut. We are studying this directly in surviving segments of the small intestine from pigs which resemble humans very much in this respect.”
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