The patent pending, proprietary strain is being marketed as Lynside Pro GI+ and joins its Lynside range of yeast products that includes the other non-proprietary, probiotic yeast strain – Boulardii.
Lesaffre Human Care commercial and marketing director Benoît Laplaize told NutraIngredients that while the strain was from the same Saccharomyces cerevisiae family as Boulardii, it differed due its ability to reduce pain in the estimated 10 per cent of people that suffer from IBS.
Boulardii has been on-market for more than 20 years as an anti-diarrhoea aid and has been the subject of more than 40 clinical trials in this area.
Lesaffre sourced the new strain after scouring its yeast varietal bank of more than 6000 strains. Functional bakery applications and supplements are the initial point of focus.
Laplaize said the strain – registered with the French National Collection of Microorganism Cultures as CNCM-3856 – had demonstrated gut health and IBS benefits in an intervention trial of 179 people conducted in 2008.
Ingredient without science is useless
“We have worked on this product for six years,” Laplaize said. “It is difficult and complex to perform these kinds of trials because you are putting a living thing (the probiotic strain) into a living thing (the human or animal). But we are confident about this study and know that an ingredient without science is useless.”
That trial, in addition to published pre-clinical trials, forms the lynch pin of an article 13.5 proprietary and emerging science application submitted to the European Union health claims regime. The dossier proposes the claim that CNCM-3856, “Noticeably reduces digestive discomfort after four weeks of consumption”.
Two further clinical trials are expected to be completed by the end of next year.
The placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomised trial was led by Professor Pierre Desreumaux at the University of Lille in France. Along with Lesaffre, Desreumaux is also the co-founder of DigestScience (www.digestscience.com), which specialises in digestive tract research.
The trial is yet to be published but will be presented at the 18th United European Gastroenterology Week beginning October in Barcelona, Spain.
It found that among 179 volunteers with symptoms of IBS who took 500mg/day of Lynside Pro GI+ per day for eight weeks:
- Intestinal pain and discomfort were greatly relieved after four weeks (significant difference between placebo and active product)
- Favourable effects on the bowel disorders caused by IBS such as abdominal/intestinal pain and discomfort, bloating, flatulence and constipation
Laplaize noted these discomfort measures were the gold standard as approved at the Third Congress of Gastroenterologists in Rome.
He said the article 13.5 health claim had been designed to strictly represent the findings of the trial.