Abstract
Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disease characterized by an altered immune response stimulated by gliadin peptides that are not digested and cause damage to the intestinal mucosa. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the postbiotic Lactobacillus paracasei (LP) could prevent the action of gliadin peptides on mTOR, autophagy, and the inflammatory response. Most of the experiments performed were conducted on intestinal epithelial cells Caco-2 treated with a peptic-tryptic digest of gliadin (PTG) and P31-43. Furthermore, we pretreated the Caco-2 with the postbiotic LP before treatment with the previously described stimuli. In both cases, we evaluated the levels of pmTOR, p70S6k, and p4EBP-1 for the mTOR pathway, pNFkβ, and pERK for inflammation and LC 3 and p62 for autophagy. For autophagy, we also used immunofluorescence analysis. Using intestinal organoids derivate from celiac (CD) patients, we analyzed the effect of gliadin after postbiotic pretreatment with LP on inflammation marker NFkβ. Through these experiments, we showed that gliadin peptides are able to induce the increase of the inflammatory response in a more complex model of intestinal epithelial cells. LP postbiotic was able to induce autophagy in Caco-2 cells and prevent gliadin effects. In conclusion, postbiotic pretreatment with LP could be considered for in vivo clinical trials.