letters

Isolates	Control	Cholic Acid	Taurocholate (TC)	Oxbile	Dead cells	Resting cells
L. casei PLA5	37.34 ± 0.11^qC	46.84 ± 0.11^qD	28.65 ± 0.07^vA	33.26 ± 0.05^jklB	2.08 ± 0.02^mno	4.74 ± 0.05^qr
L. brevis PLA7	29.75 ± 0.10^nB	39.59 ± 0.05^oD	20.11 ± 0.03^tA	21.93 ± 0.05^bcdefghijklB	1.25 ± 0.05^efghijk	4.23 ± 0.07^opq
L. casei PLA12	33.52 ± 0.06^pC	47.70 ± 0.03^qD	27.51 ± 0.07^vA	30.68 ± 0.07^hijklB	1.42 ± 0.08^fghijkl	4.60 ± 0.13^pqr
L. brevis PLA14	30.70 ± 0.04n^oC	33.80 ± 0.04^nD	28.25 ± 0.06^vB	26.58 ± 0.16^fghijklA	0.92 ± 0.06^bcdefg	2.21 ± 0.10^cdefgh
L. kefiri PLA15	26.58 ± 0.06^mB	29.93 ± 0.11^mC	18.18 ± 0.09^sA	36.02 ± 0.53^lD	1.13 ± 0.07^defghi	2.28 ± 0.03^defgh

Table 1: Cholesterol removal (μg/ml) by growing, resting and heat-killed cells of some LAB isolates. Values represented as mean ± SD; for each column, different subscripts lowercase letters, significantly different at p<0.000001 for Cholic Acid; for Taurocholate at p<0.001; for Control at p<0.0001 and for Oxbile at p<0.0001; and upper case letters for each row indicate significantly different at p<0.05 as measured by 2-sided Tukey’s HSD between different isolates and cholesterol respectively. Values represented as mean ± SD; for each column, different subscripts lowercase letters indicate significantly different at p ± 0.00001 for dead and resting cells, as measured by 2-sided Tukey’s HSD between isolates.