Probiotics and Inflammatory Pain: A Literature Review Study

Inflammatory pains caused by direct stimulation of nociceptors are altered by release of inflammatory mediators, cytokines and chemokines and also gut microbiota. A substantial clinical evidence supports the pivotal role of probiotics in the betterment of inflammatory disorders symptoms such as pain. Therefore, this study aimed to review the potential anti-inflammatory and analgesic roles of usual probiotic compounds in animal and human disorders. The increasing demand for betterment of inflammatory pain and its symptoms has led to the introduction of the role of probiotics in inflammatory pain recovery. Our literature review yielded 77 articles from 1965 to 2014 in the electronic databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, and PsycINFO. In this study, we reviewed most of the existing papers on probiotics especially focused on inflammation and pain. Our review showed that probiotics offer many advantages including toxin receptors elimination, supporting the repair of hyper permeable epithelial barriers, interfering with infections and immune system reinforcement. It was revealed that there is a close correlation between the expression of cytokines and opioid receptors in the process of inflammatory pain and probiotics have notable effects on cytokines and opioid receptors expression. Probiotics can stimulate the differentiation and activity of important immune cells (e.g. T cells), subsequently increase production of anti-inflammatory cytokines and mu-opioid receptors and decrease levels of proinflammatory cytokines. Probiotics may help to slow down progression and diminish symptoms of inflammation in animal species and human via inhibition of proinflammatory and reinforcement of anti-inflammatory cytokines. Also, according to the results of the current study, it seems that probiotics are useful for alleviating inflammatory pain without any adverse effects on host.