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08.08.2009

Life extending bacteria found in gut of Chinese centenarians

Nutritionists at the China Agricultural University are doing experiments with probiotics they found in the intestines of Chinese people who are older than a hundred. Following in the footsteps of Elie Mechnikov, the 'inventor' of probiotics, the researchers believe that the gut organisms may be life extenders.

In the Bama region of southwest China, surprisingly high numbers of people live to over a hundred. Chinese scientists have been trying to work out for years why this is so. In 1994 they suggested that it might have something to do with the gut flora of the centenarians. [Food Sci China 1994;177:47-9.] They had discovered that 53-87 percent of the bacteria population in the gut of the centenarians consists of Bifidobacteria. For normal healthy Chinese the figure is forty percent. Scientists regard Bifidobacteria as an organism that stimulates the immune system, so the researchers suspect that the bacteria protect the old people from infectious diseases.

The researchers extracted two Bifido strains from the faeces of a couple of dozen centenarians in Bama: Bifidobacterium adolescentis BBMN23 and Bifidobacterium longum BBMN68 [shown in the photo]. These they then gave to healthy mice for a period of four weeks, after which they studied the effect on the mice’s immune system ex-vivo. A control group were given a little skimmed milk.

The researchers measured the amount of lysozyme present in blood they had extracted from the mice. Lysozyme is a kind of cellular bleach which immune cells use to dissolve the membranes of bacterial intruders. The figures below show that Bifidobacterium adolescentis BBMN23 and Bifidobacterium longum BBMN68 increase the concentration of lysozyme.

In another experiment the researchers extracted immune cells from the mice's blood and placed them in contact with cells from sheep's blood. The immune cells regarded the sheep cells as intruders and attacked. When probiotic strains were added, the immune cells cleared up more sheep cells.

"This report suggests that specific substrains of bifidobacteria from guts of healthy centenarians in China may be of particular value and have the potential to be used as probiotic supplements", the researchers conclude. But maybe the Chinese are also thinking of adding the probiotics to functional foods like desserts. Researchers from the Meng Niu Dairy also took part in the study.

Source:
Nutr Res. 2009 Apr;29(4):281-9.