Coencapsulation of Synbiotics as enhancer of Immunological activity: An in vivo study

Synbiotics are nutritional supplements that are combinations of probiotic bacteria and prebiotic food ingredients. The manipulation of composition of the gut microbiota in swiss albino mice through dietary supplementation is possible by the synbiotics. Probiotic products (dietary supplements containing potentially beneficial bacteria ) and prebiotics (mainly lactulose) make up an important part of maintaining intestinal health.The probiotics use the prebiotics as a food source, which enables them to survive for a longer period of time inside the digestive system. In the present study synbiotics were encapsulated in the sodium alginate beads to improve their viability in the gut and were tested for their immunomodulator activity in mice. Synbiotics were administered in encapsulated and unencapsulated form in swiss albino mice .The animals were sacrificed after feeding them on the diet for 17 days,then immune status of the treated swiss albino mice was assessed by employing the tests for Humoral Immune Response and Cell Mediated immune response i.e Delayed Type Hypersensitivity, Nitroblue Reduction test, Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase , Bactericidal activity and antibody titer. The results showed that the encapsulated form of synbiotics are a better immune enhancer than unencapsulated form and hence may be employed for improved bioactivity of probiotics. Keywords: Lactobacillus casei 17 ,Coencapsulation , Immunomodulatory activity, Humoral Immune Response, Cell Mediated Immune Response.