This section gives an overview of developments in this area including opportunities for novel functional foods. The rare involvement of lactobacilli and starter bacteria in human infections is mentioned and a summary of traditional microbiological approaches to the enumeration of probiotic bacteria is included.

The last major update to this article was published in February 2008, since then there have been a number of significant developments. These include the failure of some major European dairy companies to obtain ratification by the EFSA of health claims for probiotic products, the deaths of patients on a probiotic trial in the Netherlands, evidence that perhaps some bacteria designated as probiotics may have the potential to aggravate allergies in neonates. Additionally one major researcher has questioned where any strain of Lb. acidophilus has been shown to meet the criteria for a probiotic! However, there has been other more positive research indicating that particular strains of bacteria, in particular lactic acid bacteria, do have the potential to enhance immunity, reduce allergy, and to alleviate distant site infection. This work has very clearly shown that dairy companies and others have a responsibility to use only well characterised strains that have been shown to have probiotic effects in medical trials. Interesting Reid (2007) has stated "A potential major problem for probiotics is the misuse of the term. This can arise from products being poorly manufactured, or being referred to as probiotic without any relevant documentation. The net effect, deleterious to the overall field of probiotics, might be that such products are found to be ineffective, when in fact they were not even probiotic in the first place." Interestingly there is now a growing consensus that there is a world-wide, critical shortage of well qualified food scientists and technologists in commercial food manufacturing. These developments will be taken into consideration in the next major update to this article in 2009.

Written by Michael Mullan