Bacterial lactic acid cultures effects

Acidophilus milk is a sharp, harsh, acidic cultured milk produced by fermenting whole or skim milk with active cultures of Lactobacillus acidophilus. Honey, glucose, and tomato juice may be added as nutrients to stimulate bacterial growth and contribute flavor. Plain acidophilus milk has the same composition as whole milk or skim milk, except that part of its lactose is converted to 0.6 to 1% lactic acid by the culture organisms. Speck (1976), who proposed the addition of L. acidophilus to pasteurized milk (sweet acidophilus milk), described the beneficial effects of implanting the organisms in the human intestines. 

It has been known for a long time that apart from their immunomodulative effect, lactic acid rods have a beneficial effect on the content of bacterial flora in the gastrointestinal tract, thus reducing the percentage of anaerobes. More lactic acid rods were bred in the cultures from the gastrointestinal tract of 1 year old infants from Estonia. Atopic conditions were less frequent in those children than in children from Sweden, who often presented Clostridium rods in the gastrointestinal tract (Sepp et al., 1997). 

There is some evidence to suggest that soluble compounds produced by lactic acid bacteria may act directly on tumor cells to inhibit their growth. Arimochi et al. (1997) showed (a) an inhibitory effect of L. acidophilus on azoxymethane-induced ACF formation in rat colon and (b) enhanced removal of 0 -methylguanine from the colonic mucosal DNA. This inhibitory effect was found in culture supernatants and not from bacterial cells. Furthermore, other studies have shown that dietary administration of lyophilized cultures of B. longum suppressed azoxymethane-induced colonic tumor development, along with a decrease in colonic mucosal cell proliferation and colonic mucosal and tumor ornithine decarboxylase and ras-p21 activities (Reddy, 1998). 

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