Date: 11/15/2010
TUMSPR News: In a recent review article by Cochrane Collaboration which was published by Wiley & Sons Publishing Company, probiotics seemed promising enough to offer a safe intervention in acute infectious diarrhea to reduce the duration and severity of the illness.
Diarrheal disease, the second leading cause of death in children under the age of five after respiratory diseases, is both preventable and treatable but this disease kills 1.5 million children every year. Diarrhea, the passage of 3 or more loose or liquid stools per day, or more frequently than is normal for the individual, is usually accompanied by symptoms of gastrointestinal infection, which can be caused by a variety of bacterial, viral and parasitic organisms. Infection is spread through contaminated food or drinking-water, or from person to person as a result of poor hygiene.
Severe diarrhea leads to fluid loss, and may be life-threatening, particularly in young children and people who are malnourished or have impaired immunity.
Most episodes of infectious diarrhea are self-limiting and usually they are not investigated to identify the infectious agent. The main risk to health is dehydration and management aims to improve and maintain hydration status. However, rehydration fluids do not reduce the stool volume or shorten the episode of diarrhea. Probiotics which are known to be “friendly” and harmless bacteria improve health. A number of randomized controlled trials have been done to see whether probiotics are beneficial in acute infectious diarrhea.
In this interventional review, Stephen J Allen, et al. from School of Medicine at Swansea University, UK who sought to assess the effects of probiotics in proven or presumed acute infectious diarrhea searched the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group’s trials register, MEDLINE (1966 to July 2010), EMBASE (1988 to July 2010), and reference lists from studies and reviews and studied 63 trials with a population size of 8014 people - mainly infants and children.
The trials, varied in the definition for acute diarrhea and the end of the diarrheal illness, as well as in the risk of bias, had been undertaken in a wide range of different settings. They also varied greatly in organisms tested, dosage, and participants’ characteristics.
The results showed that no adverse events were attributed to the probiotic intervention and probiotics reduced the duration of diarrhea, although the size of the effect varied considerably between studies.
The authors of the article conclude that use of probiotics alongside rehydration therapy, appear to be safe and with clear beneficial effects in shortening the duration and reducing stool frequency in acute infectious diarrhea but they still advise more research to guide the use of particular probiotic regimens in specific patient groups.
References:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs330/en/index.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8120599/Probiotics-cut-stomach-upsets-by-one-day-research.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD003048/pdf_fs.html
http://publicrelations.tums.ac.ir/english/news/detail.asp?newsID=20307
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