Probiotics: Emerging functional ingredients for healthy aging and age-related diseases

Life expectancy has increased steadily among older adults over the last century, raising concerns that aging populations will face inevitable challenges to age healthily. Maintenance of organ homeostasis throughout the adult lifespan is crucial to longevity and healthy aging. Advancing age is associated with the decline in adaptive homeostatic responses at molecular, cellular, and tissue-levels, and altered intestinal microbiota that deteriorates psychological and physiological functions, which together predisposes one to an elevated risk of age-related diseases, such as dementia, osteoporosis, macular degeneration, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. However, human aging is a malleable process that could be influenced by lifestyle-modifiable factors, such as diet. It is also becoming evident that dietary supplementation with probiotics may promote healthy aging and have a positive impact on the onset and progression of age-related diseases. Therefore, this chapter provides an overview of the updated preclinical and clinical evidence on the antiaging potential of probiotics and discusses their possible mechanisms of action.