Deer antler velvets are widely used in traditional medicine for their anti-aging, antioxidant, and immunity-enhancing effects. Although there are studies on deer antler velvet extract (AV) fermented using Bacillus subtilis, very little is known about ...
Deer antler velvets are widely used in traditional medicine for their anti-aging, antioxidant, and immunity-enhancing effects. Although there are studies on deer antler velvet extract (AV) fermented using Bacillus subtilis, very little is known about the effects of AV fermented with probiotic stains. This study aims to evaluate whether each probiotic strain selected for fermented antler velvet (FAV) has distinctive characteristics and produces unique changes to the metabolic profiles of FAV during fermentation as well as immune-enhancing activity. All the strains exhibited high proliferation and survival with 108–109 CFU/g in FAV. Two probiotic strains (L. rhamnosus LFR20-004 and L. sakei LFR20-007) were selected based on their results that they significantly improved sialic acid contents, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) contents of AV and extended Caenorhabditis elegans life span. 65 metabolites were detected by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) in the FAV. FAV with L. rhamnosus LFR20-004 (FAV-4) is predicted to be able to synthesize 5 amino acids (aspartic acid, glycine, proline, serine, and valine), including essential amino acids. Also, co-fermentation with both strains (FAV-Co) increased the concentrations of 5 organic acids (citramalic acid, lactic acid, malic acid, malonic acid, and succinic acid). FAV not only improves the lifespan of C. elegans, but also extended the survival of C. elegans infected with Salmonella typhi, Listeria monocytogenes, and E. coli O157. Exposure of Cyclophosphamide (Cy) to mice splenocytes reduced cell viability, but the treatment of FVA increased cell viability compared to Cy only treated cells. Interestingly, cytokines such as IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α, IFN-γ were significantly increased in spleen tissues of the Cy-induced immunosuppressed mice. These results showed that FAV might stimulate the immune reaction and provide the scientific basis for dietary supplementary as probiotics-fermentation of deer antler velvet.