Kefir-fermented herbs in Alzheimer's disease and its associated gut dysbiosis

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease and affects over 30 million people globally. The risk of Alzheimer's disease increases with age affecting 1 in 14 people over the age of 65. AD patients have memory and cognitive impairment and declined motor and verbal functions. Studies have shown that persistent glial cell-mediated neuroinflammation is the primary cause for both neurodegenerative processes and cognitive deficits in AD patients. More so, brain insulin and insulin-like growth factor signaling as well as the gut microbiota play key roles in the etiology of AD. Given the scarcity of pharmaceutical treatments for cognitive impairment in AD, nonpharmacological interventions should be considered. Such interventions could delay cognitive deterioration and may even restore earlier cognitive function. Medicinal plants have been used for managing and improving cognition for centuries and common processing methods used in recent studies include fermentation and solvent extraction alone. Such products modulate the gut microbiota and although there is no specific microbiota signature for AD, patients have a significantly different intestinal microbial composition compared to age-matched controls.