Neutralisation of toxins by probiotics during the transit into the gut: challenges and perspectives

Food contamination by toxins (both mycotoxins and bacterial toxins) represents a great challenge for their implications on health. Toxins could be removed during production, but many times, they enter the gut and act on the host. To some extents, a benefit of probiotics could be the removal/neutralisation of harmful compounds in the gut with an indirect health effect on the host. Some authors addressed the ability of yeasts and bacteria to remove mycotoxins and other toxins; however, to the best of our knowledge, there is not an overview on how and when mycotoxins and some other bacterial toxins (like cyanotoxins) can be removed by probiotics into the gut. Therefore, this topic is addressed in this paper. The manuscript is organised with an initial overview of the literature about probiotics, mycotoxins and cyanotoxins followed by a section on the ability of probiotics to remove toxins in vitro and in vivo.