ReviewNature reviews. Gastroenterology & hepatology2025
Classifying compounds as prebiotics - scientific perspectives and recommendations.
Review in Nature reviews. Gastroenterology & hepatology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 42 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Integrative Role of Berberine in Gut Microbiota Modulation and Cardiometabolic Outcomes: A Systematic Review of Randomised Clinical Trials.Nutrients · 2026Pooled it
- Prebiotics and Synbiotics in Asthma: An Integrative Review of Human Trials and Murine Meta-Analysis.Nutrients · 2026Pooled it
- Dietary intake of different carbohydrate types and asthma risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Nutrition journal · 2025Pooled it
- Increasing gut short-chain fatty acids protects intestinal barrier function but does not spare muscle glycogen or impact aerobic performance.The Journal of physiology · 2026Trial
- Resistant dextrin promotes beneficial fecal bacteria in high and low fiber diet populations: a randomized, double-blinded, controlled pilot study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Trial
- Inulin-induced improvements on bowel habit and gut microbiota in adults with functional constipation: findings of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.BMC gastroenterology · 2025Trial
- Myco-foods and the gut microbiome: impacts of mycelial extracts, biomass, and mold-fermented foods.Gut microbes · 2026Review
- Next-generation probiotics: an outlook into current applications and future developments.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Gut microbiota and renal fibrosis: novel mechanistic insights and therapeutic potential.Acta pharmacologica Sinica · 2026Review
- Interindividual Variability in Raffinose Fermentation by Human Gut Microbiota and Metabolomic Signature of a High-Efficiency In Vitro Degrader,Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Prebiotics and probiotics in animal nutrition: implications for food safety, sustainability, and circular production systems.Brazilian journal of microbiology : [publication of the Brazilian Society for Microbiology] · 2026Review
- Gut microbiota in health and disease.Molecular biomedicine · 2026Review
- Development of tea-based (Food science and biotechnology · 2026Article
- Effects of controlled fermentation by Lactiplantibacillus plantarum PBS067 on Vitis vinifera L. leaf extract.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2026Article
- Prebiotic Potential of Oligosaccharides and Polysaccharides Extracted fromFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Nutritional Management of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.Nutrients · 2026Review
- Fatty Acids as Prebiotics and Their Role in Antibiofilm Activity.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- "Envbiotics" -- a novel framework for microbiota-targeted therapeutic strategies in type 2 diabetes mellitus.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2026Review
- Exploring the prebiotic potential of commercial cellobiose: a randomized, controlled trial.Gut microbiome (Cambridge, England) · 2026Article
- Estimated prebiotic intake and depression in US adults: repeated cross-sectional analyses of NHANES 2015-2018 and 2021-2023.Journal of nutritional science · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microbiomes provide key contributions to health and potentially important therapeutic targets. Conceived nearly 30 years ago, the prebiotic concept posits that targeted modulation of host microbial communities through the provision of selectively utilized growth substrates provides an effective approach to improving health. Although the basic tenets of this concept remain the same, it is timely to address certain challenges pertaining to prebiotics, including establishing that prebiotic-induced microbiota modulation causes the health outcome, determining which members within a complex microbial community directly utilize specific substrates in vivo and when those microbial effects sufficiently satisfy selectivity requirements, and clarification of the scientific principles on which the term 'prebiotic' is predicated to inspire proper use. In this Expert Recommendation, we provide a framework for the classification of compounds as prebiotics. We discuss ecological principles by which substrates modulate microbiomes and methodologies useful for characterizing such changes. We then propose statistical approaches that can be used to establish causal links between selective effects on the microbiome and health effects on the host, which can help address existing challenges. We use this information to provide the minimum criteria needed to classify compounds as prebiotics. Furthermore, communications to consumers and regulatory approaches to prebiotics worldwide are discussed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
39358591What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.