Fermented foods: a perspective on their role in delivering biotics.

Fermented foods are often erroneously equated with probiotics. Although they might act as delivery vehicles for probiotics, or other 'biotic' substances, including prebiotics, synbiotics, and postbiotics, stringent criteria must be met for a fermented food to be considered a 'biotic'. Those criteria include documented health benefit, sufficient product characterization (for probiotics to the strain level) and testing. Similar to other functional ingredients, the health benefits must go beyond that of the product's nutritional components and food matrix. Therefore, the 'fermented food' and 'probiotic' terms may not be used interchangeably. This concept would apply to the other biotics as well. In this context, the capacity of fermented foods to deliver one, several, or all biotics defined so far will depend on the microbiological and chemical level of characterization, the reproducibility of the technological process used to produce the fermented foods, the evidence for health benefits conferred by the biotics, as well as the type and amount of testing carried out to show the probiotic, prebiotic, synbiotic, and postbiotic capacity of that fermented food.

Intestinal microbiota development in preterm neonates and effect of perinatal antibiotics.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the establishment of the intestinal microbiota in very low birthweight preterm infants and to evaluate the impact of perinatal factors, such as delivery mode and perinatal antibiotics. STUDY DESIGN: We used 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequence-based microbiota analysis and quantitative polymerase chain reaction to evaluate the establishment of the intestinal microbiota. We also evaluated factors affecting the microbiota, during the first 3 months of life in preterm infants (n = 27) compared with full-term babies (n = 13). RESULTS: Immaturity affects the microbiota as indicated by a reduced percentage of the family Bacteroidaceae during the first months of life and by a higher initial percentage of Lactobacillaceae in preterm infants compared with full term infants. Perinatal antibiotics, including intrapartum antimicrobial prophylaxis, affects the gut microbiota, as indicated by increased Enterobacteriaceae family organisms in the infants. CONCLUSIONS: Prematurity and perinatal antibiotic administration strongly affect the initial establishment of microbiota with potential consequences for later health.