The Efficacy of Probiotic Lactobacilli against Female Urogenital Opportunistic Infections

Abstract

Urogenital opportunistic infections present a leading challenge to the global human health due to the increased cost of healthcare. The biologic balance of the vaginal flora is maintained by the presence of intrinsic probiotic Lactobacilli strains which produce toxigenic compounds that impede the overgrowth of the vaginal ecosystem by opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms. As a result, the present review was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of probiotic lactobacilli inorder to ascertain its usefulness in the prophylaxis and/ treatment of female urogenital opportunistic infections. This study was carried out by evaluating the probiotic role of Lactobacilli by the production of some defense factors such as lactic acid, hydrogen peroxide as well as bacteriocin. The results revealed that, there was an inverse correlation between the opportunistic infective agents and the presence of Lactobacilli isolates evidenced by the fact that the most common opportunistic bacterial isolates such as Streptococcus agalactiae, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, and Klebsiella oxytoca, were inhibited by the hydrogen peroxide, lactic acid and bacteriocin, produced by the Lactobacilli isolates investigated. The results obtained from this research portend that, the use of vaginal pessaries containing lactobacilli microspores could help prevent the lactobacilli-opportunistic infective agents’ disequilibrium that had posed a new threat to the global female health.

Keywords: Lactobacilli, Probiotic, Opportunistic infection, Microspores.