Fig. 4

Bacterial survival in the simulated human digestive tract. Both strains were submitted to an artificial digestion process and, at each step, aliquots were collected to estimate the quantity of viable bacteria. CFU counting were made before the experiment begins (Initial), at the start of gastric phase (pH adjusted to 3 - T1), at the end of gastric phase and beginning of intestinal phase (120 min in pH 3 - T2), and at the end of intestinal phase (pH restored to 7 and 120 min incubation - T3). The lines represent the CFU count in each step of the digestion processes while the bars represent the viability in percentage relative to the initial CFU. Data are expressed as mean and standard deviation of three independent experiments