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Probiotics is a multibillion dollar industry that marketing claims to be an effective treatment for a multitude of diseases, including diarrhea. However, the results of a new study from the University of Calgary show that the popular product has no effect on gastroenteritis, commonly called the wrong time intestinal flu, in children.
"We studied the effects of administering probiotics to hundreds of children whose parents were accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea in emergency departments across the country," said Dr. Stephen Freedman, Emergency Medicine Physician in Pediatrics at Alberta Health Services, holds the Professor of Children's Hospital Foundation in the field of Child Health and Wellness and a member of the Research Institute of Alberta Children's Hospital of the Cumming School of Medicine. "We have found no evidence that probiotics have had an effect on symptom reduction or recovery."
Freedman led a Canadian study at six sites including nearly 900 children. He was also co-principal investigator of a study conducted simultaneously on 10 sites in the United States and led by Dr. David Schnadower, a physician who recruited nearly 1,000 children. The results of the two studies will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine Thursday, November 22nd.
"More modest trials had shown promising results, and we wanted to replicate these results on a large scale to determine whether the patient's age, the type of infection and the use of antibiotics or the duration of illness of a child Schnadower, MD, who led the research as a professor of pediatrics at the faculty of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis and is now a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. "The results of both studies were consistently negative, regardless of the method of data analysis."
The researchers tested two brands of probiotics available commercially. Recruitment for the Canadian double-blind randomized study began in 2013. The children were between three and 48 months old. Half of the children received probiotics while the other half received a placebo.
"These results, taken as a whole, are very powerful, showing that children treated with probiotics have exactly the same results for a wide range of symptoms as those treated with placebo – probiotics have had no effect", says Freedman. member of the O & # 39; Brien Institute for Public Health of the Cumming School of Medicine. "The results clearly indicate that we need to challenge the role and benefits of probiotics for other health applications, through extensive, rigorous, patient-focused clinical trials."
Probiotics are generally considered safe to use. They are classified as food ingredients in Canada and can be sold as natural health products. As such, they do not require the same rigorous scientific testing as drugs, such as multiple clinical trials, to be able to claim benefits. "Until now, most studies on the effects of probiotics were small and funded by the industry," says Freedman. "In order to better serve families, we need independent research to prove or disprove the claims of marketers of health products."
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