Mansimran Kaur Randhawa, Aruna Bhatia, Sheikh Abid Ali and Praveen Pal Balgir
The recent increase in the incidence of infectious diseases or immunological disorders raises a need to find new immunomodulators. Probiotics have been shown to be one of the alternative agents which strengthen the immune response of the body. But recently bacterial DNA is also being explored as an immune enhancer. Present study was conducted to compare the in vivo immunomodulating capacity of three probiotic strains as live bacteria with their genomic DNA. Probiotic bacteria’s (109 cells ml-1) were administered orally whereas their extracted DNA’s (75 μg mL-1) were injected into the tibialis anterior muscle in 3 doses over a span of 17 days. The animals were sacrificed after the completion of experimental period i.e. 17 days. Immune status of the treated animals was assessed by employing the tests for Humoral Immune Response and Cell Mediated Immune Response as Delayed Type Hypersensitivity, Nitroblue Tetrazolium Reduction test, Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase and Bactericidal activity was studied in SRBC immunized mice. Levamisole (25mgkg-1) was used as the standard drug. Overall, these results demonstrated that a substantial augmentation in immune efficacy was observed in the animals receiving genomic DNA over the group receiving viable bacteria. It is concluded that genomic DNA of probiotics should be exploited as a potent immune enhancer and as a biotherapeutic agent
