Over the past few decades, probiotics have emerged as a viable medical tool for preventing and/or treating diseases. This narrative review provides recent findings on Probiotics and their benefits on the host immune system. It also highlights the specific mechanisms through which probiotics mediate those benefits. The study also explores the topical or systemic probiotic administration method. Authors screened databases like Google Scholar, Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure database, using various keyword combinations such as: “probiotic” AND “Immunomodulation” OR “probiotic” AND “Immunoregulation” OR “probiotic” AND “Immunostimulation”, for relevant literature written in English only. The review shows that probiotics can regulate the host immune system, including regulating T cells, dendritic cells, intestinal epithelial cells, and several signal pathways, and confer health benefits. Although several clinical trials also revealed the prospects and efficacy of probiotics as immunomodulators and treatment of diseases, there is a need for thorough future investigations on the effectiveness of specific strains of probiotics involved in immunomodulation.

Medicines are used to cure and treat ailments, relieve or eliminate disease symptoms, and slow down the disease process. Any attempt to disrupt this natural medicine process, using falsified medications, spells doom to a consumer of such medication. The challenge of fake medicines is a global one and affects developing and developed nations and currently assumes great significance as a result of globalization challenges, which have flattened the entire world, hence removing barriers to the movement of products and services. The cross-sectional survey was conducted, using six local government areas of Anambra State in South-East Nigeria, namely Awka, Nnewi, Onitsha, Aguata, Ogbaru, and Anaocha, among adults aged 18 years and above. A minimum sample size of 500 was calculated and stratified sampling was employed to select respondents in order to ensure that various population groups, the upper class, middle class, and lower class were represented. This research has shown that falsified medicine is an evil wind that blows nobody any good. It negatively affects every aspect of the citizen’s livelihood, ranging from their health, which manifests as treatment failures, deformities, loss of life to death, to loss of confidence in the healthcare providers, revenue losses to individuals, healthcare providers, manufacturers, and finally corruption of the genuine medicines supply chain with fake and adulterated medicines. The study has clearly shown the experiences of residents of Anambra State, South-East Nigeria with fake and adulterated medicines and also services as a wake-up call to medicines regulators like NAFDAC, PCN, the PSN, and Federal Ministry of Health to declare a state of emergency on the fight against fake and adulterated medicines and make enabling laws that are punitive enough towards the fight against this scourge, so that the healthcare and well-being of Nigerians would be assured at all times.