Saccharomyces cerevisiae show low levels of traversal across the human blood brain barrier in vitro

Abstract

Background: Saccharomyces cerevisiaeis generally considered safe, and is involved in the production of many types of foods and dietary supplements. However, some isolates, which are genetically related to strains used in brewing and baking, have shown virulent traits, being able to produce infections in humans, mainly in immunodeficient patients. This can lead to systemic infections in humans.Methods: In this work, we studiedS. cerevisiaeisolates in anin vitrohuman blood brain barrier model, comparing their behaviour with that of several strains of the related pathogensCandida glabrataandCandida albicans.Results: The results showed that this food related yeast is able to cross the blood brain barrierin vitro.However, in contrast toC. glabrataandC. albicans,S. cerevisiaeshowed very low levels of traversal.Conclusions: We conclude that using anin vitrohuman blood brain barrier model withS. cerevisiaecan be useful to evaluate the safety ofS. cerevisiaestrains isolated from foods.