Probiotic-derived immunomodulation represents a paradigm shift in managing inflammatory disorders, offering unprecedented opportunities to restore immune homeostasis and combat inflammation-driven pathologies. Despite their therapeutic promise, the clinical translation of probiotics has been hindered by an incomplete mechanistic understanding of their pleiotropic effects. This review systematically delineates the multifaceted anti-inflammatory mechanisms of probiotics, encompassing the reconstruction of gut microbial ecosystems, modulation of immune regulatory circuits, mitigation of oxidative stress, and disruption of pro-inflammatory signaling pathways. Translational advances encompassing gnotobiotic models, randomized controlled trials, and bioengineered probiotics harboring enhanced therapeutic payloads are rigorously evaluated in this review. A systematic examination of industrial applications in nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and functional foods is presented, alongside a critical discussion of persistent translational bottlenecks. Looking forward, we emphasize multi-omics-guided strain discovery, synthetic biology-based engineering of intelligent microbial therapeutics, and optimized translational frameworks to unlock the full potential of microbiota-targeted immunomodulation in precision medicine.
Liu et al. (2026) studied this question.