CHICAGO, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- A major U.S. study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed that a commonly used probiotic is not effective in improving symptoms in young patients with gastroenteritis.
The study involved 971 children aged three months to four years that treated between July 2014 and June 2017 in the emergency departments at St. Louis Children's and nine other geographically diverse U.S. academic medical centers.
Participants were eligible if they had come to the emergency room with symptoms of gastroenteritis: watery stools, vomiting, diarrhea or other signs of acute intestinal infection. They also had to have not taken probiotics in the preceding two weeks.
Half of the children in the study were randomly assigned to receive a common probiotic known as Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, or LGG, twice daily for five days, while the others took a similarly looking and tasting placebo. Otherwise, the children received standard clinical care.
Neither the researchers nor the parents knew which children had received the probiotics.
Regardless of whether the children took a placebo or probiotic, their symptoms and recovery were nearly identical. The data showed that diarrhea in both groups of kids lasted about two days and the kids missed an average of two days of day care.
"We tested many different scenarios - infants compared with toddlers, whether the patient had taken antibiotics, whether the gastroenteritis was caused by virus or bacteria, and how long the diarrhea had been going on before the treatment was given. We also had the probiotic independently tested for purity and strength. Every time, we reached the same conclusion," said the study's lead author David Schnadower, a Washington University professor of pediatrics and a physician at St. Louis Children's Hospital.
"LGG did not help," Schnadower said.
A similar study in Canada evaluated effectiveness of a different probiotic, Lacidofil, in children with gastroenteritis, and the findings of that study mirrored those in the U.S. study.
There are no treatments for pediatric acute gastroenteritis other than giving children fluids to prevent dehydration and, sometimes, medication to relieve nausea.
Gastroenteritis accounts for 1.7 million pediatric emergency room visits and more than 70,000 hospitalizations each year.
Consumers worldwide spend billions of dollars each year on probiotic-enriched foods, as well as over-the-counter supplements in pill and powder form. Statistics show that the global market for probiotics is predicted to expand in the United States from 37 billion dollars in 2015 to 64 billion dollars in 2023.
The findings were published Nov. 22 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
