ARTICLE FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE December 2022 63 EPITHELIAL BARRIER STRENGTHENING An essential function of the intestinal mucosa is to act as a physical barrier between gut luminal content and the remainder of the body. The physical intestinal barrier depends on a variety of mucosal structural components that confer the property of selective permeability with free exchange of water, ions and macromolecules between the intestinal lumen and the underlying tissues. The luminal surface of the intestinal mucosa is lined by a hydrated gel, composed of mucins secreted by goblet cells. This layer prevents large particles and intact bacteria from coming into direct contact with the underlying epithelium. Underneath the mucus layer, there is the epithelial monolayer as primary determinant of the mucosal barrier. An intact epithelium restricts the passage of hydrophilic solutes but to further limit transmucosal flux, the paracellular space needs to be sealed as well. This task is regulated by a series of intracellular junctions (tight junction, adherens junctions and desmosome) who together form the apical junctional complex (Odenwald and Turner 2017). An experiment performed in 2020 by Pascual et al., showed that supplementation of the yeast postbiotic Safmannan® containing >20% mannans and >20% β-glucans could increase the goblet cell density (Figure 1). These results are in line with another study where the same yeast postbiotic was able to induce the mucin expression. In the last study, a factorial design was used to elucidate the effect of the postbiotic with and without heat stress. In both the non heat stress and the heat stress treated groups an increase in mucin production was seen in the animals supplemented with the postbiotic. This leading to a better Figure 1. Goblet cell numbers significantly increased by yeast postbiotic Safmannan at different timepoints (adapted from Pascual et al., 2020)
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