A Fail for Probiotic Treatment of Acute Diarrhea
Probiotic treatment studies in areas with prevalent pediatric diarrhea can be useful to determine probiotic effectiveness for acute diarrhea. One such region in Indonesia was used by Dr. Badriul Hegar of the Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Indonesia to investigate the potential of adding Lactobacillus rhamnosus R0011 and L. acidophilus R0052 to oral rehydration solution with added zinc. However, the probiotics proved ineffective. No differences were noted between the probiotic and control group. Many similar studies do show positive results, however, which could mean that the administration method or the strains used were suboptimal.
Good News for Cold Sufferers
The results of clinical studies often differ. To get a better handle on the real outcome of a particular treatment, researchers often perform systematic reviews of published trials to get a better bird’s eye view of the true situation. Dr. Sarah King of the York Health Economics Consortium in the United Kingdom recently investigated the beneficial effects of probiotic bacteria, specifically Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria, on acute respiratory infections, like colds. After looking at a total of twenty randomized, controlled trials, she determined that probiotic use decreased the duration of respiratory illness by one whole day.
Gut Bacteria May Predict Crohn’s Disease Relapse
People with Crohn’s disease (CD) suffer from a chronic inflammation of the intestines. To control the disease, patients usually need to take drugs indefinitely, however, patients still have relapses. To find out if the bacterial composition of the gut could be used as a predictor of relapse, Dr. Sylvie Rajca of Sorbonne University in France carefully measured changes in the intestinal microbiota of CD patients after they stopped using their drugs. She then examined if there were correlations between the microbiota in those who relapsed and those who did not. Interestingly, she found that the intestinal bacteria significantly differed between the relapse patients and non-relapse patients. According to the results, the loss of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii may be useful in the future to detect CD relapses.
References
- Rajca S, Grondin V, Louis E, Vernier-Massouille G, Grimaud JC, Bouhnik Y et al. Alterations in the Intestinal Microbiome (Dysbiosis) as a Predictor of Relapse After Infliximab Withdrawal in Crohn’s Disease. Inflamm Bowel Dis 2014. [Epub ahead of print]
- King S, Glanville J, Sanders ME, Fitzgerald A, Varley D. Effectiveness of probiotics on the duration of illness in healthy children and adults who develop common acute respiratory infectious conditions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Nutr 2014: 1-14. [Epub ahead of print]
- Hegar B, Waspada IM, Gunardi H, Vandenplas Y. A Double Blind Randomized Trial Showing Probiotics to be Ineffective in Acute Diarrhea in Indonesian Children. Indian J Pediatr 2014. [Epub ahead of print]