Prebiotic Potential of Culinary Spices Used to Support Digestion and Bioabsorption.

Prebiotic Potential of Culinary Spices Used to Support Digestion and Bioabsorption. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2019;2019:8973704 Authors: Peterson CT, Rodionov DA, Iablokov SN, Pung MA, Chopra D, Mills PJ, Peterson SN Abstract Although the impact of medicinal and culinary herbs on health and disease has been studied to varying extents, scarcely little is known about the impact of these herbs on gut microbiota and how such effects might contribute to their health benefits. We applied in vitro anaerobic cultivation of human fecal microbiota followed by 16S rRNA sequencing to study the modulatory effects of 4 culinary spices: Curcuma longa (turmeric), Zingiber officinale (ginger), Piper longum (pipli or long pepper), and Piper nigrum (black pepper). All herbs analyzed possessed substantial power to modulate fecal bacterial communities to include potential prebiotic and beneficial repressive effects. We additionally analyzed the sugar composition of each herb by mass spectrometry and conducted genome reconstruction of 11 relevant sugar utilization pathways, glycosyl hydrolase gene representation, and both butyrate and propionate biosynthesis potential to facilitate our ability to functionally interpret microbiota profiles. Results indicated that sugar composition is not predictive of the taxa responding to each herb; however, glycosyl hydrolase gene representation is strongly modulated by each herb, suggesting that polysaccharid...
Source: Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine - Category: Complementary Medicine Tags: Evid Based Complement Alternat Med Source Type: research