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Livescience_2014 04133.txt

#Bacteria in Wine May Bring Health Benefits There are bacteria in wine that may be beneficial for people's health new research finds. In the study researchers in Spain isolated 11 strains of bacteria from wine including strains of Lactobacillus which are also found in yogurt as well as Oenococcus and Pediococcus bacteria which are associated with the wine-making process. Up to now many studies have reported that the best foods to deliver probiotics are fermented dairy products so that the probiotic properties of wine-related Lactobacillus were studied hardly said study author Dolores Gonzã¡lez de Llano of Universidad Autã noma de Madrid in Spain. But nowadays there is a need for novel and nondairy probiotics from the increasing number of lactose-intolerance cases occurring in the world population coupled with the unfavorable effect of cholesterol contained in fermented dairy products Gonzã¡lez de Llano told Live Science. Don't Be fooled: 5 Probiotics Myths Probiotics are live organisms that can bring health benefits when consumed in the right amounts Gonzã¡lez de Llano said. Consuming probiotics may be beneficial primarily for maintaining a healthy community of gut bacteria and bowel function she said adding that probiotics have also been reported to possibly have anticancer and cholesterol-lowering properties. In the study the researchers examined the ability of the bacteria they isolated from wine to survive in conditions similar to those found in the human gastrointestinal system. Bacteria in any food product must to be able to survive in the hostile environment of the gastrointestinal tract in order to have an impact on human health. The researchers looked to see whether the bacteria in wine could survive when exposed to simulated gastric juice bile and lysozyme an enzyme that is highly concentrated in human saliva that can damage bacterial cell walls. They found that the bacteria could survive in such conditions and their survival was comparable to or even better than the survival of several strains of bacteria known to be beneficial to human health. The investigators also looked at how well the bacteria in wine might stick to the walls of the human intestine by growing human intestine cells in a lab dish. They found the bacteria did stick and therefore the bacteria may provide beneficial effects such as the exclusion of pathogens or harmful bacteria from the intestine they wrote in the study. In particular one strain of bacteria found in wine called P. pentosaceus CIAL-86 had an excellent ability to stick to the intestinal wall and good activity against E coli the researchers said. The probiotic properties of the lactic-acid bacteria isolated from wine are similar to those of probiotics that come from foods like dairy products such as fermented milk or yogurt and dry sausages and foods of plant origin such as sauerkraut and olives fruits cereals meat or fish she said. The new findings do not mean however that drinking a couple glasses of wine a day will provide the same health benefits as eating a food like yogurt she said. Even though the moderate consumption of wine which she defined as two glasses per day may confer certain health benefits wine does not currently provide a sufficient amount of probiotics to be beneficial because many of the bacteria are eliminated during a process called sulfating which stabilizes wine she said. Sulfating is the process of adding sulfites which are used preservatives commonly in winemaking.)However probiotics could be isolated from wine in order to be commercialized as probiotics or added to functional foods she said. The study will be published in the December issue of the journal Food Microbiology. Follow Agata Blaszczak-Boxe on Twitter. Follow Live Science@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Live Science

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