Pesky at best, life-threatening at worst, the respiratory condition asthma involves chronic inflammation of the airways and lungs, affecting 262 million people globally in 2019. First-level management usually involves an array of inhalers meant to prevent and/or relieve symptoms like wheezing, chest tightness, and coughing, as well as modifying activities to head off a flare-up. But intriguing news has come out of a study in Brazil, which shows that sufferers could soon find relief from asthma in... a sandwich?
That’s only a slight exaggeration for comic effect: Researchers have found a way of spiking regular old bread with a probiotic, S. cerevisiae UFMG A-905. Medicine has long used this key microorganism in dairy products or supplement form, taking advantage of an established connection between gut microbiome and asthma. The team wanted to see if naturally fermented bread – more stable than milk, more common a food worldwide, and lactose-free – could also be a good vehicle for S. cerevisiae UFMG A-905. After fermenting, baking, and feeding the bread to mice with asthma over 27 days, the researchers discovered significantly less respiratory inflammation and lower levels of asthma biomarkers in the critters.
“To assess its potential, the researchers tested and compared three types of bread. The first was fermented with commercial yeast, the second with S. cerevisiae UFMG A-905, and the third with S. cerevisiae UFMG A-905 plus microcapsules containing live S. cerevisiae UFMG A-905.
‘We added encapsulated live yeast in order to improve probiotic viability and activity at the high temperature reached during the baking process,’ said Marcos de Carvalho Borges, the last author of the article and a professor in the Department of Clinical Medicine at the Ribeirão Preto Medical School (FMRP-USP). ‘Microcapsules protect bioactive and probiotic compounds, improving their stability, survival and bioavailability.’ [...]
‘We found that both types of bread fermented with S. cerevisiae UFMG A-905 prevented the development of asthma in the mice, which in conjunction with the results of other experiments shows that this yeast has highly consistent effects and appears genuinely capable of combating this respiratory disorder,” Borges said.”
The team is enthused by the results so far, and is prepared to take the next, big step of a human trial. As a fan of bread, and of keeping my asthmatic friends comfortable, this is fantastic! We might soon see that a slice of S. Cerevisiae a day could keep the doctor away as much as – or more than – an apple
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