1. Introduction
Listeria monocytogenes is ubiquitous gram-positive, facultative anaerobic, non-spore forming bacterium. This organism is opportunistic intracellular pathogen responsible for foodborne disease, listeriosis. Despite the fact, that the disease is relatively rare, it is characterized by severe symptoms and high mortality rate (it accounts for 20-30 % of the deaths of infected individuals worldwide). Ingestion of highly contaminated food (aprox. 10
9 cells) is in most cases associated with mild to severe febrile gastroenteritis. By contrast, in the case of high risks individuals such as children, elderly and immunocompromised people the disease is characterized by sepsis, meningitidis and meningoencephalitides [
1,
2,
3]. Pregnant women are also highly endangered group because
L. monocytogens traverse fetoplacental barrier and cause infection of fetus, resulting in fetal death, premature birth, or complications to pregnancy [
4]. The infectious dose for these groups of people is as low as 100 to 1000 cells [
1,
2,
3]. In general, listeriosis is the fifth most reported zoonosis in the EU. Despite strict hygiene precaution and regular food control, annually, around 2,000 people become infected in the EU. Around 50 % of cases are hospitalized and 10 % percent of those infected die, which is much more compared to other foodborne and zoonotic diseases [
5].
L. monocytogenes can be subclassified in 13 known serotypes, from which 1/2a, 1/2b, 1/2c and 4b are the most common serotypes in food and are related with 95% of all listeriosis outbreaks. However, serotype 4b accounts for 50% of cases [
3,
6,
7].
This disease can be treated by various antibiotics such as benzylpenicillin, ampicillin, erythromycin, meropenem, moxifloxacin, linezolid and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (EUCAST, 2023). Nevertheless, not all individuals can be treated with antibiotics, especially pregnant women. In general, the best form of protection is prevention. One of the most important approaches of prevention is to avoid the consumption of food where these bacteria may be present, e.g., raw meat, soft ripening cheeses, uncooked fish products etc. [
8]. However, due to
L. monocytogenes ubiquitous dispersal, the risk of ingestion and disease outbreak cannot be fully excluded even in foods such as fresh vegetable or fruits [
9,
10].
Today, it is already known that the main barrier to the invasion of
L. monocytogenes into the host's body is commensal bacteria, which are normally found in the digestive tract. Due to the spread of antibiotic resistant pathogenic strains, there are efforts to support the viability and metabolic activity of commensal microbiota in the digestive tract of the host. This effort can be supported by the administration of prebiotics in host nutrition, which can nourish the health-benefit bacteria. These bacteria can than occupy the adhesion sites on the intestinal mucosa, produce antimicrobial substances and thus prevent the colonization of digestive tract with pathogens and/or inhibit their growth [
11,
12,
13].
Prebiotics are defined as substrates that are selectively utilized by host microorganisms conferring a health benefit. The most commonly used prebiotics in the food industry or in the pharmaceutical sector are mainly non-digestive nonstarch polysaccharides and oligosaccharides [
14]. The most popular prebiotics are inulin, beta-glucans, fructooligosaccharides (FOS), galactooligosaccharides (GOS), xylooligosaccharides (XOS), isomaltooligosaccharides (IMO), raffinose series oligosaccharides (RSO) or lactulose. For infants, the best prebiotics are human milk oligosaccharides (HMO), which are found in breast milk [
15,
16]. Despite that prebiotics should only be metabolized by health-beneficial bacteria, it was found that even undesirable bacteria can grow on these substrates [
17,
18].
Because
L. monocytogenes is able to live in different environments such as soil or vegetation as a saprophyte or in the cytosol of mammalian cells as an intracellular pathogen, it can use different substrates as sources of the main elements for its growth. Nutrient requirements are strain-specific and may vary depending on the strain origin [
19]. This organism requires amino acids (leucin, isoleucine, valine, histidine, arginine, glutamine, and methionine) and organically bound sulphur for its growth, but it can also metabolize peptides or complex proteins [
19,
20]. In the absence of these substances in the environment, bacteria can use hexose-phosphate or glycerol as alternative energy sources. Bacteria use this mechanism especially in the role of an intracellular pathogen, when there is lack of amino acids in the cytosol [
19]. The growth is improved by various saccharides especially by glucose.
L. monocytogenes can ferment differently mono- and oligosaccharides, e.g., fructose, lactose, mannose, trehalose, cellobiose, L-rhamnose and maltose [
21,
22,
23,
24]. It is known that
L. monocytogenes can also utilize some polysaccharides such as maltodextrin [
22] and it has a functional chitinolytic system and an active lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase, the mechanisms associated with the ability to cleave chitin and cellulose [
25,
26].
To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies focused on the ability of L. monocytogenes to metabolize prebiotics. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate the growth properties of the most common serotypes of L. monocytogenes in media containing different prebiotics as the sole source of energy and to evaluate the safety of prebiotics oligosaccharides used in foodstuff and dietary supplements with respect to the possible support of listeria growth.
4. Discussion
The consumption of prebiotics saccharides should selectively stimulate the growth of health-promoting (probiotic) bacteria, suppress occurrence of pathogenic bacteria and conferring benefit(s) upon host health [
14,
18]. However, it has been noted that some prebiotics can be utilized by undesirable bacteria as well [
17,
18].
Listeria monocytogenes as a foodborne pathogen, can also occur in the digestive tract, where it can use various nutrients for its growth, including several specific saccharides [
19,
20]. The ability to utilise different saccharides by bacteria depends on the bacteria's genetic predisposition [
19,
37,
38]. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies focused on the ability of
L. monocytogenes to metabolize prebiotics. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the growth of the most common listeria serotypes on several prebiotics’ supplements with a purity of 90-100 %, depending on the product.
The results showed that lactulose, raffinose, stachyose, 2´-fucosyllactose and mixture of human milk oligosaccharides were unable to promote
L. monocytogenes growth and even residual substrates presented in tested supplements did not affect the results. A slight increase in cell numbers was observed for supplements containing inulin, fructooligosaccharides and galactooligosaccharides. Inulin and fructooligosaccharides are prebiotics composed of linear chains of fructose units, linked by β-(2,1) glycosidic bonds, terminated by a non-reducing sucrose end. The difference between these two prebiotics is in the length of chain, whereas fructooligosaccharides comprise of 3 – 7 fructose units, inulin is mainly built form 10 – 60 units [
12,
39]. L. monocytogenes is capable to utilize fructose [
24], but it seems that it is not able to cleave the β-(1,2) glycosidic bond that connects individual fructose units. Galactooligosaccharides are composed of 2 – 8 galactose units linked together with β-(1,6) glycosidic bonds and one molecule of terminal glucose connected by β-(1,3) or β-(1,4) glycosidic bond [
40]. This prebiotic saccharide does not promote growth of
L. monocytogenes, because galactose is not among substrates that provide a source of carbon for listeria growth [
23]. The bacterial growth and specific growth rate on these prebiotic supplements were comparable to the growth in residue control. Therefore, we assume that the growth of
L. monocytogenes strains was probably caused by the presence of residual monosaccharides in the prebiotic supplements, which constituted 5 % of fructooligosaccharides and galactooligosaccharides supplements and ≤ 10 % of inulin supplement. Higher growth on inulin than on fructooligosaccharides and galactooligosaccharides could be affected by higher content of monosaccharides. Strain-specific growth of listeria on certain substrates are known [
19,
38], which was also shown in our study. Although a statistically significant strain specificity growth was observed, no comparable growth of
L. monocytogenes strains as in the positive control was found.
Beta(1,3)-D-glucan was the only prebiotic supplement, on which the comparable growth of
L. monocytogenes strains as on the positive control was found. Beta(1,3)-D-glucan is a prebiotic polysaccharide belonging to the group of beta-glucans composed only from monomers of glucose that are linked by β-(1,3) glycosidic bonds [
41,
42]. They are generally considered effective and widely applied prebiotics, which are used for their ability to protect the body against various pathogens, cancer, high LDL cholesterol level and their antioxidant effects, which overall supports the host's health [
43]. Beta-glucans are major structural components of plant and fungi and include the major biopolymer cellulose. The structure of cellulose is similar to beta(1,3)-D-glucan, but glucose units are linked by β-(1,4) glycosidic bonds [
44]. It has been demonstrated that
L. monocytogenes is able to utilize cellulose [
25,
26]. Therefore, it could be assumed that
L. monocytogenes is capable to cleave beta-glucans as well. Beta-glucans used in this study were of S. cerevisiae origin, and in addition to β-(1,3)-glucans also contain less than 15% of β-(1,6)-glucans [
43]. Since the results confirmed this presumption, it could be expected, that
L. monocytogenes can clave both β-(1,3) and β-(1,6) bonds, and metabolize released glucose, which is the main source of carbon in listeria metabolism. Regarding the growth curve, there were observed some differences between the course of
L. monocytogenes growth on beta(1,3)-D-glucan and the positive control. Slightly lower cell counts on beta(1,3)-D-glucan could be easily explained by the fact that part of the energy, that could have been used for reproduction, was spent on the substrate cleavage. It could be also result of gradual or incomplete cleavage. The decrease in the number of viable cells on beta(1,3)-D-glucan was slower compared to the positive control, probably due to the gradual release of glucose from the beta-glucan chain.
There are various natural sources of beta-glucans, e.g., yeast, barley, bacteria, seaweed, fungi or dahlia tuber. They differ not only in origin, but also in glycosidic bond position as well as in their other characteristic such as solubility in water or alkalis. Except the β-(1,3)- also β-(1,4)- or β-(1,6)- glucans are found in supplements [
45,
46,
47]. The differences between the growths of
Bifidobacterium sp. depending on the source of beta-glucans were demonstrated [
47]. Thus, we can hypothesize that the
L. monocytogenes ability to metabolize these prebiotics also depends on the source.
Regardless of whether the
L. monocytogenes is able to utilize these prebiotics or not, effects against pathogens, such as supporting the individual's immunity, growth of beneficial microbes and reduced adherence ability of pathogens in general, have been reported for these substances [
48,
49,
50,
51,
52]. However, the results are sometimes ambiguous or contradictory. For example, Ebersbach et al. [
53] found that inulin, which
L. monocytogenes is not able to use as source of carbon, decreased the resistance of the host body against the
L. monocytogenes. On the contrary, despite that
L. monocytogenes strains are able to utilize beta(1,3)-D-glucan, it has been found that these prebiotics stimulate immune system in mice or guinea pig and effectively inhibit pathogens proliferation, reduce adhesion to the digestive tract wall and suppress
L. monocytogenes infection [
54,
55,
56]. In addition beta(1,3)-D-glucan are metabolized by commensal and probiotic intestinal bacteria which leads to competition for substrate. Moreover, short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), which are formed through microbial metabolite cross-feeding, suppress listeria growth and support the body's disease defense. The health-promoting bacteria also produce various substances that inhibit
L. monocytogenes, such as bacteriocins [
57,
58,
59,
60,
61,
62,
63,
64]. The fact that
L. monocytogenes is able to utilize beta(1,3)-D-glucan is therefore not alarming. Compared to the growth of previously studied
Lactobacillus,
Bifidobacterium and commensal
Clostridium strains in the presence of selected prebiotics, the growth of
L. monocytogenes was lower [
17,
47,
65]. This is most likely affected by the medium composition. The media used for probiotics/commensals testing are composed for fastidious bacteria and contained complex nutritional mixture except the energy source. Some of these nutrients can
L. monocytogenes utilize for its growth even without the presence of saccharides, therefore nutrient-poor medium is required for this organism [
17,
47,
65].
Finally, the question how else prebiotics can affect metabolism and behavior of this pathogen because different saccharides have been found to affect the pathogenic potential [
66,
67,
68,
69], biofilm formation potential [
69] and resistance to antimicrobial substances [
21], heat or acids [
69], arises. To our best knowledge, there are no studies focusing on these topics for prebiotics used in our study.
Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted from the perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible. Future research directions may also be highlighted.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, Kodešová, T. and Šubrtová Salmonová, H..; methodology, Kodešová, T.; Šubrtová Salmonová, H. and Musilová Š.; validation, Kodešová, T.; formal analysis, Kodešová, T.; investigation, Kodešová, T.; Mašlejová, A., Horváthová, K.; resources, Vlková, E.; writing— original draft, Kodešová, T.; writing— review & editing, Šubrtová Salmonová, H., Vlková, E.; visualization, Kodešová, T.; supervision, Šubrtová Salmonová. H.; funding acquisition, Vlková, E. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.