Background: Genus Clostridium accompanies more than 200 known species and at least 30 among them are associated\nwith human and animal diseases. At the moment, the treatment of clostridial infections is based on use of antibiotics.\nHowever, due to the European ban on the use of antibiotics in livestock production, novel therapeutic strategies for\ntreatment of these hardly curable infections have been evaluated. Hence, in this study the antimicrobial effect of newly\ndesigned probiotic culture consisted of natural isolates Lactobacillus helveticus BGRA43, Lactobacillus fermentum BGHI14\nand Streptococcus thermophilus BGVLJ1-44 against Clostridium difficile and Clostridium perfringens was analyzed.\nResults: The probiotic culture showed strong in vitro antimicrobial effect on C. difficile (human clinical isolate).\nIn addition, individual strains and the probiotic combination exhibited immunomodulatory activity. The probiotic\ncombination significantly increased the proliferation of GALT lymphocytes. At the other hand, none of the bacterial\ntreatments (individual strains and the combination) induced the production of proinflammatory cytokines IL-6 and IL-1�²\nby intestinal epithelial cells, Caco-2. Interestingly, Caco-2 cells exposed to the probiotic combination produced\nsignificantly elevated amount of TGF�² pointing to potential protecting effect of the probiotic. In addition, the\nresults of field trial on spontaneously infected goats revealed reduction of C. perfringens in goats (below the\ndetection threshold) after the probiotic treatment.\nConclusions: The results of this study indicated that the novel probiotic deserves to be further investigated\nas a promising antimicrobial agent against C. difficile and C. perfringens.
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