| Summary: | We previously found that the continuous feeding of ethanol caused mice dysbiosis, in which the cecal microbiota were significantly altered, as compared with those in the non-feeding control group, especially in some bacterial genera involved in gut inflammation. In the present study, we have found that the fermented extract of stevia (<i>Stevia rebaudiana</i>) leaves with plant-derived lactic acid bacteria (LABs), <i>Pediococcus pentosaceus</i> LY45, improves the trimethylamine (TMA) productivity of cecal content, which can be used as an indicator of dysbiosis. The following animal experiment also shows that the LY45-fermented stevia extract represses the typical increase in serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels, which decreased from 1106 to 210 IU/L (<i>p</i> < 0.05) and from 591 to 100 IU/L (<i>p</i> < 0.05), respectively, together with the simultaneously latent TMA productivity (from 1356 to 745 μM, <i>p</i> < 0.05) of cecal content in the ethanol-fed mice. The microbiota analyses have shown that the observed increased alterations in pro-inflammatory genera putative <i>SMB53</i> (family Clostridiaceae) and <i>Dorea</i> are restored by the fermented stevia extract. Our result indicates that the preliminary bioconversion of herbal medicinal precursors by fermentation with safe microorganisms like LABs is expected to be a hopeful method of producing specific metabolites that may contribute to the reconstruction of gut microbiota.
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