Advanced technology has shown that the fermentation products of HMOs made the gut lining less “leaky.” A leaky intestinal barrier has been linked to gut conditions such as coeliac disease, Crohn’s disease, and irritable bowel syndrome as well as a range of conditions affecting the rest of the body.
These studies provide scientific evidence that HMOs may be used to develop strategies to counter these conditions and improve gut health in adults.
A little SCIENCE HERE! A Recent clinical Trial…
A recent clinical trial showed that two specific HMOs, 2′-O-fucosyllactose (2’FL) and/or lacto-N-neotetraose (LNnT), are safe and well-tolerated in adults and are modulators of the adult gut microbiota with an increase in bifidobacteria.
This suggests that HMO supplementation may be a valuable strategy to modulate health in adults.
To address this, a collaboration was established between the Quadram Institute, a food and health research center in the Norwich Research Park, UK, and Glycom, a Danish-based biotechnology company, and the world’s leading supplier of HMOs.
Their study, published in the journal Nutrients, was partly funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
A Simulator of the Human Intestinal Microbial Ecosystem (SHIME®) was used to determine the influence of HMOs on the adult gut microbiota composition and function.
These experiments were performed at ProDigest, a spin-off company from the Center of Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET), located at Ghent University in Belgium.
The results showed that fermentation of 2’FL, LNnT and combinations thereof led to an increase of bifidobacteria, accompanied by an increase of short-chain fatty acids.
Prof. Nathalie Juge’s team in the Quadram Institute then used the products of this fermentation to study the influence of fermented HMOs on the intestinal barrier function of cell lines and advanced gut-on-chip models.
Caco2 cells are a line of cells originally derived from the human gut and used extensively in research, with an arrangement of them into a single layer being an established model for studying the gut and its permeability.
A significant reduction in permeability was observed using Caco2 cell monolayers with fermented HMOs, accompanied by an increase in specific proteins known to help maintain barrier integrity, tight-junction proteins, and cytokines.