Extracellular Vesicles Derived from Gastrointestinal Microbiota: A New Approach to Clinical Studies

Extracellular vesicles, naturally released from all cell types including bacteria, are of great importance in medical microbiology due to transporting a variety of biomaterials, enzymes, and virulence factors, regulating immunity, and having roles in colonization and initiation of signaling pathways. These vesicles are also secreted from microbiota in the gastrointestinal tract and affect the host through various mechanisms by causing many systematic, metabolic, and physiological changes. Nowadays, the role of these vesicles is proven in maintaining gastrointestinal homeostasis, the pathogenesis, and diagnosis of related diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, mental disorders, and infectious diseases. Effective use of these characteristics could be possible by modulating the microbiota and its metabolites and using extracellular vesicles derived from probiotics. Therefore, the study of these vesicles as microbiota-derived products and next generation probiotics offers a new approach in clinical studies. The present study investigates how the microbiota-derived extracellular vesicles affect the hostchr('39')s health and play underlying roles in various diseases.