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Enterococci: Between Emerging Pathogens and Potential Probiotics

Enterococci are ubiquitous microorganisms that could be found everywhere; in water, plant, soil, foods, and gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals. They were previously used as starters in food fermentation due to their biotechnological traits (enzymatic and proteolytic activities) or protecti...

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Autores principales: Ben Braïek, Olfa, Smaoui, Slim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6556247/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31240218
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2019/5938210
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author Ben Braïek, Olfa
Smaoui, Slim
author_facet Ben Braïek, Olfa
Smaoui, Slim
author_sort Ben Braïek, Olfa
collection PubMed
description Enterococci are ubiquitous microorganisms that could be found everywhere; in water, plant, soil, foods, and gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals. They were previously used as starters in food fermentation due to their biotechnological traits (enzymatic and proteolytic activities) or protective cultures in food biopreservation due to their produced antimicrobial bacteriocins called enterocins or as probiotics, live cells with different beneficial characteristics such as stimulation of immunity, anti-inflammatory activity, hypocholesterolemic effect, and prevention/treatment of some diseases. However, in the last years, the use of enterococci in foods or as probiotics caused an important debate because of their opportunistic pathogenicity implicated in several nosocomial infections due to virulence factors and antibiotic resistance, particularly the emergence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci. These virulence traits of some enterococci are associated with genetic transfer mechanisms. Therefore, the development of new enterococcal probiotics needs a strict assessment with regard to safety aspects for selecting the truly harmless enterococcal strains for safe applications. This review tries to give some data of the different points of view about this question.
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spelling pubmed-65562472019-06-25 Enterococci: Between Emerging Pathogens and Potential Probiotics Ben Braïek, Olfa Smaoui, Slim Biomed Res Int Review Article Enterococci are ubiquitous microorganisms that could be found everywhere; in water, plant, soil, foods, and gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals. They were previously used as starters in food fermentation due to their biotechnological traits (enzymatic and proteolytic activities) or protective cultures in food biopreservation due to their produced antimicrobial bacteriocins called enterocins or as probiotics, live cells with different beneficial characteristics such as stimulation of immunity, anti-inflammatory activity, hypocholesterolemic effect, and prevention/treatment of some diseases. However, in the last years, the use of enterococci in foods or as probiotics caused an important debate because of their opportunistic pathogenicity implicated in several nosocomial infections due to virulence factors and antibiotic resistance, particularly the emergence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci. These virulence traits of some enterococci are associated with genetic transfer mechanisms. Therefore, the development of new enterococcal probiotics needs a strict assessment with regard to safety aspects for selecting the truly harmless enterococcal strains for safe applications. This review tries to give some data of the different points of view about this question. Hindawi 2019-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6556247/ /pubmed/31240218 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2019/5938210 Text en Copyright © 2019 Olfa Ben Braïek and Slim Smaoui. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review Article
Ben Braïek, Olfa
Smaoui, Slim
Enterococci: Between Emerging Pathogens and Potential Probiotics
title Enterococci: Between Emerging Pathogens and Potential Probiotics
title_full Enterococci: Between Emerging Pathogens and Potential Probiotics
title_fullStr Enterococci: Between Emerging Pathogens and Potential Probiotics
title_full_unstemmed Enterococci: Between Emerging Pathogens and Potential Probiotics
title_short Enterococci: Between Emerging Pathogens and Potential Probiotics
title_sort enterococci: between emerging pathogens and potential probiotics
topic Review Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6556247/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31240218
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2019/5938210
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