The buffalo Minas Frescal cheese as a protective matrix of Bifidobacterium BB-12 under in vitro simulated gastrointestinal conditions Silvani Verruck, Elane Schwinden Prud ^ encio, Cleide Rosana Werneck Vieira, Edna Regina Amante, Renata Dias de Mello Castanho Amboni * Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Departamento de Ci^ encia e Tecnologia de Alimentos, Rod. Admar Gonzaga, 1346, Bairro Itacorubi, Florian opolis, SC 88.034-001, Brazil article info Article history: Received 4 November 2014 Received in revised form 27 March 2015 Accepted 6 April 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Buffalo Minas Frescal cheese Bifidobacterium BB-12 Probiotic cheese Probiotic In vitro simulated gastrointestinal abstract The buffalo Minas Frescal cheese with Bifidobacterium BB-12 and the MRS broth, as a control, were used under in vitro simulated gastrointestinal conditions. Both samples were submitted to typical conditions in the human mouth, oesophagus-stomach, duodenum and ileum, sequentially. At the end of each step it was evaluated the count of bifidobacteria viable cells and their survival rates. After each one step of simulated gastrointestinal conditions, the bifidobacteria viable cells count were above the recommended for a probiotic product, both the buffalo cheese as the MRS broth. A protective effect of buffalo cheese was observed in the simulated gastrointestinal conditions, including the recovery of the injured bifi- dobacteria cells, as verified after the duodenum step. Buffalo Minas Frescal cheese thus appeared to protect the Bifidobacterium BB-12 during in vitro simulated gastrointestinal conditions, being a promising carrier of this probiotic bacterium. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Buffalo milk is commonly used for the manufacture of dairy products on a commercial scale and has become popular in Brazil and in other places of the world over the last decade (Hussain, Yan, Grandison, & Bell, 2012). Minas Frescal cheese, one of the dairy products most widely consumed in Brazil, is a fresh, soft white cheese. It is slightly salty, it has a mild taste of lactic acid (Cunha, Viotto, & Viotto, 2006), and it is produced by enzymatic coagula- tion of pasteurized milk with rennet (Buriti, Rocha, Assis, & Saad, 2005). According to Buriti et al. (2005) the Minas Frescal cheese appears to be ideally suited to serve as a carrier for probiotic bacteria. Probiotics are viable bacteria that are beneficial to the host's health when administered in appropriate quantities (FAO/WHO, 2006). However, for a product to be considered probiotic, the count should be equal to or greater than 6 log CFU/g on the product (Shah, 2011). Moreover, according to Gomes, Vieira and Malcata (1998), the use of probiotic bacteria as a component in dairy food can be justified if viability and activity in the carrier food can be ensured until time of consumption. On the other hand, Naidu, Bidlack, and Clemens (1999) stated that probiotic bacteria must survive passage through the mouth, esophagus, a highly acidic stomach, and a small intestine to exert the health benefits in the ileum. Among the mostly used genera, the Bifidobacterium stands out for being one of the most widely used probiotics in functional dairy products (Scheller & O'Sullivan, 2011). Considering that probiotic products have well-known beneficial properties to health, it becomes necessary to evaluate the survival of Bifidobacterium BB-12 after gastrointestinal digestion process. In this sense, Failla and Chitchumroonchokchai (2005) reported that in vitro methodologies have been developed as a simple and fast approach to in vivo assays because the latter are expensive long- term studies with high variability between subjects. Some studies perform the simulated gastrointestinal conditions with structured foods added with probiotics, but not continuously as occurs natu- rally during digestion (Abadía-García et al., 2013; Makelainen et al., 2009; Ortakci, Broadbent, McManus, & McMahon, 2012; Solieri, Bianchi, Mottolese, Lemmetti, & Giudici, 2014). However, the simulated gastrointestinal conditions used in the present study includes all gastrointestinal tract compartments, mouth (with * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ55 48 37215395; fax: þ55 48 37219943. E-mail address: renata.amboni@ufsc.br (R.D.M.C. Amboni). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect LWT - Food Science and Technology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lwt http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2015.04.014 0023-6438/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. LWT - Food Science and Technology xxx (2015) 1e5 Please cite this article in press as: Verruck, S., et al., The buffalo Minas Frescal cheese as a protective matrix of Bifidobacterium BB-12 under in vitro simulated gastrointestinal conditions, LWT - Food Science and Technology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2015.04.014