Probiotics: a Promising Generation of Heavy Metal Detoxification

Abstract

Different environmental toxins especially heavy metals exist in soil, water, and air recording toxic effect on human, animal, and plant. These toxicant elements are widespread in environment causing various disturbances in biological systems. Numerous strategies have been applied recently to alleviate heavy metal contamination; however, most of these strategies were costly and seemed unfriendly to our environment. Probiotics are living cell bacteria with beneficial characteristics for human health. Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are the major probiotic groups; however, Pediococcus, Lactococcus, Bacillus, and yeasts are recorded as probiotic. The vital role of the probiotics on maintenance of body health was previously investigated. Probiotics were previously recorded to its powerful capacity to bind numerous targets and eliminate them with feces. These targets may be aluminum, cadmium, lead, or arsenic. The current review discusses the history of probiotics, detoxification role of probiotics caused by heavy metals, and mechanism of their action that modulate different signaling pathway disturbance associated with heavy metal accumulation in biological system.

Full text

Probiotics: a Promising Generation of Heavy Metal Detoxification
Rehab M. Abdel-Megeed
1
Received: 23 July 2020 /Accepted: 17 August 2020
#Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Different environmental toxins especially heavy metals exist in soil, water, and air recording toxic effect on human, animal, and
plant. These toxicant elements are widespread in environment causing various disturbances in biological systems. Numerous
strategies have been applied recently to alleviate heavy metal contamination; however, most of these strategies were costly and
seemed unfriendly to our environment. Probiotics are living cell bacteria with beneficial characteristics for human health.
Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are the major probiotic groups; however, Pediococcus,Lactococcus,Bacillus,andyeasts
are recorded as probiotic. The vital role of the probiotics on maintenance of body health was previously investigated. Probiotics
were previously recorded to its powerful capacity to bind numerous targets and eliminate them with feces. These targets may be
aluminum, cadmium, lead, or arsenic. The current review discusses the history of probiotics, detoxification role of probiotics
caused by heavy metals, and mechanism of their action that modulate different signaling pathway disturbance associated with
heavy metal accumulation in biological system.
Keywords Probiotics .Heavy metals .Lactobacillus .Bifidobacterium
Introduction
Environmental pollution problem has been reported to be
more critical as a result of rapid industrialization. Water and
food pollutants disrupt ecological balance in our environment
and declare toxic effects on living organisms. Heavy metals
are non-degradable compounds that persist in numerous or-
ganic and inorganic forms. Some heavy metals such as Fe,Cu,
and Zn are essential trace elements but others such as Cd, Pb,
Hg declared to be toxic even in traces [1–4]. Accumulation of
heavy metals in human organs has adverse impact on human
health. The non-biodegradable nature of heavy metals influ-
ences their longevity and availability in the soil causing both
mutagenic and carcinogenic over expression. Further, this be-
comes part of the human food chain [5,6]. Conventional strat-
egies used for heavy metal detoxification or cleanup are usu-
ally much cost and have different side effects on the health [7].
One emerging, cheap technique is the use of probiotics to
remove heavy metals biochemically [8].
Probiotics expression came from the Greek word ‘pro bi-
os’. This word has been translated as ‘for life’.The‘probiotic’
was hired by Lilly and Still well firstly in 1965 for description
of the ‘substances produced by any microorganism for en-
hancing another to grow’[9]. In 1974, Parker suggested that
probiotics are ‘microorganisms and substances that participate
in microbial balance in gut’[10]. Salminen et al. [11]termed
probiotics as the ‘types of food that contain bacteria benefit to
living health’, whereas Marteau et al. [12] defined them as
‘preparations of microbial cells or bacterial cell components
which have a useful effect on maintaining health. Finally,
since probiotics were effective in the treatment of some
gastro-intestinal diseases, they could be an important thera-
peutic agent [11].
International Life Sciences Institute defined probiotics as a
viable microbial supplemented food that improves host health
[11]. Probiotics is an important sort of functional foods as they
declared beneficial effects for health improvement and reduce
risk of diseases in man [13]. In 2002, FAO and WHO
redefined probiotics as ‘Live micro-organisms which when
administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on
the host’[14,15]. Although many bacterial genera like
Bacillus, Bifidobacterium, Enterococcus, Lactobacillus,
Leuconostoc, Pediococcus, Propionic bacterium, and
Streptococcus have been used as probiotics [11], the most
beneficial effects in man are Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria
[16]. Lactic acid fermentation or lacto-fermentation is a two-
stage anaerobic metabolic process by which Lactobacillus or-
ganisms convert glucose and other six-carbon sugars present
*Rehab M. Abdel-Megeed
rehabzenbaa@gmail.com
1
Therapeutic Chemistry Department, National Research Centre,
El-Buhouth St, Dokki, Cairo 12622, Egypt
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-020-02350-1
/ Published online: 21 August 2020
Biological Trace Element Research (2021) 199:2406–2413
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