E-Mail The idea of deriving health benefits from live microorganisms is well known, but some non-living microorganisms, too, can have beneficial health effects. Yet even with an increasing number of scientific papers published on non-viable microbes for health, the category is not well defined and different terms are used in different contexts. Now, a group of international experts has clarified this concept in a recently published scientific consensus definition in Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology. The authors use an established term --postbiotics-- and precisely define it as "a preparation of inanimate microorganisms and/or their components that confers a health benefit on the host".