• Probiotics as alternatives to antibiotics, A Review
  • parvin mohammadshafiei,1,*
    1. Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Islamic Azad University, Kazeroun, Iran


  • Introduction: The use of antibiotics to control and prevent diseases requires very high costs every year, and their continuous use causes drug resistance. On the other hand, from the point of view of human health, the issue of drug residues in food products has also been raised, and there are reports of some diseases. Antibiotics are not the answer to their treatment, so creating bacterial competition use probiotics is a new strategy for health, prevention, and treatment of various gastrointestinal, urinary-genital, and skin infections in humans and animals. Also, nowadays, probiotics are suitable substitutes for antibiotics for Coping with pathogenic agents in humans and animals has been introduced and the popularity and use of probiotic products and medicines have become widespread. Another important problem is the transfer of antibiotic residues from animal meat to the human body, which are widely used to fight infectious agents and also as growth promoters in animal husbandry. The infections of different rivers, especially the establishment of different strains of salmonella in the human intestine, are not only caused by food contamination, but probably the exposure of livestock and poultry to antibiotics and finally, the consumption of their meat by humans also contributes to this. Therefore, it is necessary to use probiotics as a suitable alternative to antibiotics in the control of infectious and bacterial diseases in both humans and livestock. Also, probiotics can be used as improvers of food digestion and vitamin production, and they can be used as an alternative to growth-promoting antibiotics in livestock and poultry farming. This study aims to review the key role of probiotics as a suitable replacement for antibiotics in our fight against infectious disease.
  • Methods: This study is reviewing data accumulated from literature and prestigious case studies which are in connection with our subject.The search words were:" Probiotics,” “Antibiotics,” “Antibacterial,” “effective effects of probiotics,” using PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct and Google Scholar databases. Furthermore, manual searches of other relevant journals and keywords searches were performed. We have focused on published papers from 2010 to 2022.
  • Results: The role of probiotics in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases and the strengthening of the body's immune system is of great importance, and this role has been proven in numerous studies, and it has been repeatedly emphasized that these microorganisms can be considered as a suitable alternative to antibiotics.
  • Conclusion: Several studies have been conducted on probiotics and their beneficial effects. Probiotics are one of the newest and most effective targeted products, which are used both as super-specialized food products and as targeted drugs in human and animal breeding, and as a suitable substitute for antibiotics and growth stimulants. Lactobacillus and bifidobacteria are the most important bacteria found in most fermented products and the digestive system, which were used in the form of foods such as yogurt and kefir since ancient times to treat some diseases and digestive disorders, and it is even believed that some of these foods Like kefir, they also cause longevity in humans. With these observations, we can understand the important role of these beneficial microorganisms in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases and consider them as suitable substitutes for antibiotics, although this statement may be weak in some infectious diseases, but the role of these microorganisms should not be underestimated. It was neglected in strengthening the immune system and helping to cure many diseases. Despite the safety of consuming products containing this type of probiotics it should be given more attention and study so that the probiotic product that reaches consumption has a safety standard and then becomes available to the general consumers. another important problem is the transfer of antibiotic residues from animal meat to the human body, which are widely used to fight infectious agents and also as growth promoters in livestock breeding, which ultimately affects Excessive use causes antibiotic resistance in humans. Therefore, it is important to replace antibiotics with probiotics in livestock and poultry breeding.
  • Keywords: Probiotics, Antibiotics, Antimicrobial activity, Infectious diseases