Probiotics and Alcoholic Liver Disease: Treatment and Potential Mechanisms

Table 1

Probiotics application in experimental ALD.

Animal	Alcohol feeding model	Probiotics/(prebiotics) treatment	Effect	Mechanism based on the study	Reference
Rat	Liquid diet containing ethanol and corn oil for 1 month	A daily bolus of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG at 10^10 CFU/mL for 1 month	Improved liver pathology score and lowered plasma endotoxin level	Prevention of endotoxemia, improved barrier and immune function	[34]
Rat	15 g/kg/day ethanol consumption for 2 weeks	Liquid diet through an intragastric tube containing Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus helveticus, and Bifidobacterium pretreatment for 1 week	Normalized AST/ALT levels, improved liver histological score, and lowered plasma endotoxin level	Prevention of endotoxemia, improved barrier and immune function	[35]
Mouse	Lieber-DeCarli diet (5% EtOH, w/v) for 4/5 weeks	Heat-killed Lactobacillus brevis SBC8803 orally administered at 100/500 mg/5 mL/kg/day for 5 weeks	Reduced serum ALT and AST, TG, and liver total cholesterol	Reduction of gut-derived endotoxin through induction of heat shock protein	[52]
Rat	Gavage with gradually increased ethanol concentration to 8 g/kg/day in 10 weeks	Gavage with Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG at 2.5 × 10^7 CFU/mL/day or oats 10 g/kg/day for 10 weeks	Normalized colonic microbiota composition, reduced hepatic steatosis, and improved alcoholic steatohepatitis	Prevention of colonic mucosa-associated dysbiosis, reduction of oxidative stress in intestine and liver	[14, 36]
Mouse	Lieber-DeCarli liquid diet (5% EtOH, w/v) for 8 weeks	Culture broth of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG added to the diet at 10^9 CFU/mouse/day for the last 2 weeks	Reduced plasma ALT, endotoxin level, liver steatosis, and inflammation	Increasing HIF-mediated mucosal protecting factors and tight junction proteins, positive modification of gut microflora, reduction of endotoxemia, and desensitization of macrophage to endotoxin	[17, 38, 71]
Mouse	Acute binge, one dose of 6 g/kg ethanol	Gavage with Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG supernatant at a dose of equivalent to 10^9 CFU/mouse/day pretreatment for 5 days	Reduced liver enzymes, hepatic steatosis, hepatic ROS, and serum endotoxin level	Increasing HIF-mediated mucosal protecting factors and intestinal tight junction proteins	[53]
Rat	3 doses of 5 g/kg ethanol administration every 12 hours	Intragastric feeding of VSL#3/heat-killed; VSL#3 at 0.6 g/kg body wt. pretreatment for 30 min	Lowered plasma endotoxin level	Regulation of the ecological balance of gut microbiota, prevention of TNF-α, decreasing epithelial permeability, and increasing tight junction proteins—ZO-1, occludin	[37]
Mouse	Multiple doses of 5 g/kg/day ethanol, plus multiple LPS for a total of 11 weeks	Intragastric feeding of Lactobacillus rhamnosus R0011 and Lactobacillus acidophilus R0052 (1 mg/mL/day) for the last 2 weeks	Improved hepatitis activity, increased body weight	Modulation of the gut-liver axis: reduction of ALT, TLR4, TNF-α, and IL-1β expression; increasing IL-10 expression	[67]
Mouse	Lieber-DeCarli liquid diet (5% EtOH, w/v) for 4 weeks	Liquid diet containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG supernatant at a dose of equivalent to 10^9 CFU/mouse/day pretreatment for 4 weeks	Reduced hepatic steatosis and inflammation, reduced endotoxemia; normalized fatty acid levels in mouse liver and feces	Restoration of occludin in ileum mediated by the inhibition of miR122a expression, increasing hepatic AMPK activation, and inhibition of hepatic apoptosis; increasing intestinal and decreasing hepatic fatty acid and increasing amino acid concentration	[54–56]