Purpose of review: Probiotics intake may be considered beneficial by prospective and pregnant mothers, but their effects on offspring development are incompletely understood. The purpose of this review was to examine recent pre-clinical and clinical studies to understand how maternal probiotics exposure affects offspring health outcomes.
Recent findings: Effects were investigated in the context of supporting offspring growth, intestinal health, and gut microbiota, preventing allergic diseases, supporting neurodevelopment, and preventing metabolic disorders in pre-clinical and clinical studies. Most human studies focused on infancy outcomes, whereas pre-clinical studies also examined outcomes at adolescence and young adulthood. While still understudied, both pre-clinical and clinical studies propose epigenetic modifications as an underlying mechanism. Optimal timing of intervention remains unclear. Administration of selected probiotics to mothers has programming potential for sustaining life-long health of offspring. Administration protocols, specific windows of susceptibility, and individual-specific responses need to be further studied.
Keywords: Developmental Origins of Health and Disease; Epigenetics; Gut microbiota; Human; Infant; Mouse; Nutritional programming; Pig; Pregnancy; Probiotics; Rabbit; Rat; Sex.
© 2022. The Author(s).