Recent Knowledge on the Probiotic Saccharomyces cerevisiae in Aquaculture: A Narrative Review

Aquaculture is a key food production sector responsible for meeting the nutritional needs of a rapidly growing global population. However, the emergence of disease outbreaks has become a major challenge for the aquaculture industry, resulting in significant economic losses. The use of costly and toxic antibiotics for treatment has a negative impact on the aquatic environment. Consequently, there has been growing interest in probiotics as a non-antibiotic approach to managing disease outbreaks and improving fish performance. The use of the yeast probiotic Saccharomyces cerevisiae has shown remarkable benefits in aquaculture. In February 2025, a narrative search was conducted on the Web of Science (WoS) database for the period 2015-2025 to identify relevant studies investigating the beneficial effects of S. cerevisiae in aquatic species. After searching WoS, 644 articles were found, and the most relevant articles were reviewed, summarized, and discussed. The probiotic S. cerevisiae has shown a wide range of benefits, including an improved growth performance, improved feed efficiency, enhanced diversity of the gut microbiome, and a superior immune response. The implementation of S. cerevisiae has been a recent trend, and its efficacy in aquatic environments has been thoroughly investigated. This review aims to provide a valuable insight into S. cerevisiae as one of the most important aquaculture probiotics and highlights the need for more research to fully understand its benefits and mechanism of action.