foods Review Prebiotics: Definition, Types, Sources, Mechanisms, and Clinical Applications Dorna Davani-Davari 1, Manica Negahdaripour 2,3, Iman Karimzadeh 4, Mostafa Seifan 5,*, Milad Mohkam 6, Seyed Jalil Masoumi 7, Aydin Berenjian 5 and Younes Ghasemi 2,3,7,8,* 1 Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Incubator, School of Pharmacy, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz 71348, Iran;
[email protected] 2 Department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, School of Pharmacy, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz 71348, Iran;
[email protected] 3 Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz 71348, Iran 4 Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz 71348, Iran;
[email protected] 5 Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Waikato, Hamilton 3216, New Zealand;
[email protected] 6 Biotechnology Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz 71348, Iran;
[email protected] 7 Nutrition Research Center, Department of Clinical Nutrition, School of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz 71348, Iran;
[email protected] 8 Department of Medical Biotechnology, School of Advanced Medical Sciences and Technologies, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz 71348, Iran * Correspondence:
[email protected] (M.S.);
[email protected] (Y.G.); Tel.: +64-07-838-4173 (M.S.); +98-71-324-26729 (Y.G.) Received: 27 February 2019; Accepted: 5 March 2019; Published: 9 March 2019 Abstract: Prebiotics are a group of nutrients that are degraded by gut microbiota. Their relationship with human overall health has been an area of increasing interest in recent years.