Synbiotics in Oral Drug Delivery

Gut microbiota constitutes a variety of microorganism like bacteria, fungi, virus, rickettsiae, etc. Any imbalance in gut microbiota termed as dysbiosis leads to a variety of diseases or disorders namely cancer, diabetes mellitus, inflammatory bowel disease, neurodegenerative disease, and many more. Hence, to revert this imbalance in gut microbiota is necessary to combat the abovementioned diseases or disorders. Synbiotics can be administered to cause balance in gut microbiota which enables the suppression of various kinds of disorders or diseases caused by dysbiosis. But the oral administration of synbiotics suffers from the problem of reduced viability of probiotic strains during their transit through gastrointestinal tract due to gastric pH of stomach, various intestinal enzymes, and bile salts. Moreover, the strict processing and storage conditions also harm the viability of probiotics. Hence, it is required to develop the advanced techniques to address the above constraints’ associates with synbiotics. Encapsulation of synbiotics in form of microcapsules, microparticles, and nanoparticles has emerged as a viable option to improve the viability of microbial strains in synbiotics. However various nanotechnology-based formulations are yet to be explored. This chapter summarizes the potential of synbiotics in various diseases, oral delivery of synbiotics, various novel approaches for oral delivery of synbiotics along with commercial synbiotics.