Many diseases that affect the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) have great influence on the quality of life of the majority of patients. Many probiotic strains are being highly studied as a promising candidate due to their beneficial effect reported in the GIT. With the purpose of increasing the beneficial characteristics of some probiotics strains and, consequently, to improve further the reported results, many probiotic strains expressing or encoding different proteins, with anti-inflammatory activities, have been developed. These recombinant strains have been reported as good candidates for the treatment of different pathological conditions, especially colitis and mucositis disease since they have been shown to have positive results and good perspectives for GIT inflammation. Thus, this chapter will first address the aspects of the gastrointestinal tract in humans as well as its microbiota. In a second moment, it will discuss about chronic diseases, mainly the intestinal ones. Finally, it will discuss about probiotics, especially concerning on lactic acid bacteria (LAB), and its action in the prevention and treatment of these diseases. At the final part, we will point out aspects on the development of recombinant strains and the results found in the literature on disease models.
Part of the book: The Health Benefits of Foods