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Nutritional Immunology

Lactobacillus GG Bacteria Ameliorate Arthritis in Lewis Rats¹

Ehud Baharav, Felix Mor^*, Marisa Halpern and Abraham Weinberger²

Department of Medicine B, Rabin Medical Center, Beilinson Campus, and Laboratory of Physiopathology of Joints and Inflammation, Felsenstein Medical Research Center, Petah Tiqva, affiliated with the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; ^* Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel; Department of Pathology, Rabin Medical Center, Golda Campus, Petah Tiqva, affiliated with the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

²To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: avrahamw{at}post.tau.ac.il.

Probiotic bacteria have beneficial effects in infectious and inflammatory diseases, principally in bowel disorders. In the case of chronic progressive autoimmune arthritides, a major goal of treatment is to reduce inflammation. We hypothesized that probiotic bacteria would ameliorate inflammation found in arthritis models. To assess this effect, Lewis rats were injected with 50 µg bovine -tropomyosin (TRM) or complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA) to induce tropomyosin arthritis (TA) or adjuvant arthritis (AA), respectively. In both models, the rats were divided into 6 groups and fed 0.5 mL/d of the following suspensions: 1) heat-killed Lactobacillus GG (LGG) bacteria; 2) live LGG, both 10¹¹ colony-forming units (cfu)/L; 3) sterilized milk; 4) plain yogurt; 5) yogurt containing 10¹¹ cfu/L LGG; or 6) sterilized water. In the disease-prevention experiments, feeding started 1 wk before or after disease induction. In the therapeutic experiments, feeding was initiated at the onset of clinical arthritis. In all experiments, there were significant interactions between time and treatment (P < 0.001), except for milk, which had no effect in the therapeutic experiment. Histologically, rats fed yogurt containing LGG had a milder inflammation in all experiments (P < 0.05), whereas rats fed plain yogurt exhibited a moderate inflammatory score only in the prevention experiments. Anti-TRM antibody titers were not affected by any of the treatments in any of the experiments. Ingestion of live or heat-killed human LGG had a clinically beneficial effect on experimental arthritis. Our observation of the remarkable preventive and curative effect on arthritis using commercial yogurts containing lactobacilli, especially LGG, suggests the need for investigation of these agents in arthritic patients.

KEY WORDS: • Lactobacillus GG • experimental autoimmune arthritis • tropomyosin • adjuvant arthritis • milk products

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