Advances in Natural Medicines, Nutraceuticals & Neurocognition

Protein Energy Malnutrition (PEM), one of the global devastating problems, contributes to nearly half of the deaths in children below five years of age. Inadequate intake or inappropriate nutrient absorption drives the people towards PEM, which exhibit a series of metabolic changes that leads to reduction in body weight, profound impairment on mucosal integrity, villi morphology and loss of beneficial gut flora as well as depression in mucosal immune response. Thereby, PEM is significant, nevertheless underestimated for infection susceptibility due to perturbances in gut flora and decreased protein, calorie source. In absence of any specific therapies, the therapeutic potential of diet, known to play a significant role in shaping gut microbiota, can be used to cure dysbiosis. However, encouraging data suggests that probiotics supplementation as an adjuvant to renutrition diet may help in reverting gut dysbiosis condition, occurred due to PEM. Therefore, the aim of the study is to develop PEM murine model and to evaluate body weight (primary indicator), organ index, histopathological changes between the malnourished and control group. Also, the malnourished gut had disturbed gut microbiota which resulted in malabsorptionof nutrients and leaky gut conditions. However, oral administration of Lactobacillus reuteri LR6, as probiotic fermented milk (PFM-109 cfu/animal/day) and bacterial suspension (BS–109 cfu/animal/day) in PEM showed a significant improvement in morphological parameters and had a modulating effect on the gut microenvironment and mucosal immunity. Therefore, the study suggests that probiotics as a dietary supplement might assist in reversing malnutrition, acting as an adjuvant to boost gut barrier function.