Dietary Supplementation with Probiotic Strain Improves Immune-Health in Aged Mice

Abstract

Ageing is associated with several anatomical and physiological changes of the organism and, the increase in global elderly population promotes the research to develop strategies to improve their quality of life. In this work, we characterized the immunological alterations naturally produced during aging in a mice model and, evaluated the effect of probiotic Lactobacillus (L.) rhamnosus CRL1505 administration on those immunological parameters. We demonstrated that L. rhamosus CRL1505 was able to improve peritoneal macrophages phagocytic activity and the number of intestinal IgA+ cells in aged mice, reaching values of those parameters similar to young adult mice. The results of this work indicate that is plausible that the immunobiotic CRL1505 strain may find applications as a beneficial immunomodulator in aging to reinforce the intestinal and systemic immunity. The immune modulation in aging induced by L. rhamnosus CRL1505 could lead to the development of new strategies for functional foods specifically tailored for the elderly.