Stronger gut microbiome modulatory effects by postbiotics than probiotics in a mouse colitis model

Probiotics are increasingly used as adjunctive therapy to manage gastrointestinal diseases, such as ulcerative colitis. However, probiotic use has posed some safety concerns. Thus, postbiotics are proposed as alternatives to probiotics in clinical applications. However, no study has directly compared the clinical benefits of probiotics and postbiotics. This study compared the beneficial effect of postbiotics and probiotics derived from the strain, Bifidobacterium adolescentis B8589, in a dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced experimental colitis mouse model. Four groups of mice (n = 7 per group) were included in this work: Control (received water plus saline), DSS (received DSS without postbiotic/probiotic), Postbiotic (received DSS plus postbiotic), and Probiotic (received DSS plus probiotic). Our results showed that intragastric administration of both probiotic and postbiotic ameliorated colitis, reflected by decreased histology scores in Postbiotic and Probiotic groups compared with DSS group (P < 0.05). The fecal microbiota alpha diversity was not significantly affected by DSS-, postbiotic, or probiotic treatment. However, the postbiotic treatment showed stronger effects on modulating the fecal microbiota beta diversity, composition, and metagenomic potential than the probiotic treatment. Overall, our findings suggested that probiotics and postbiotics had similar ability to improve disease phenotype but had distinct ability to regulate the gut microbiota and metabolic pathways in the context of ulcerative colitis. In view of the smaller safety concern of postbiotics compared with probiotics and its stronger modulatory effect on the host gut microbiota, we propose that postbiotics are to be considered for use as next-generation biotherapeutics in managing ulcerative colitis or even other diseases.