Preschoolers, Probiotics, and Gastroenteritis

Estimates are that close to two million preschool children will be taken to the emergency room for vomiting and diarrhea every year; the term generally used is gastroenteritis (GE). Two research groups, one from the U.S. and one from Canada, conducted studies to see if probiotics would have any impact on the course of GE from the time of the ER visit for at least two weeks after. Here’s what they did.

Researchers in Canada recruited close to 900 children and researchers in the U.S. had close to a thousand; all the children had symptoms of GE. The subjects were randomly assigned to a placebo or experimental group. The subjects in the experimental groups were given a five-day course of probiotics; the Canadian group used two strains and the U.S. used one strain. The subjects were then tracked to see whether there was a difference in the severity of the GE between those kids getting the placebo and the ones getting probiotics. Both research groups used the same GE symptom scale to monitor the severity of the GE.

Did the probiotics have any impact on the severity of the GE? We’ll check out the results on Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

References:
1. N Engl J Med 2018; 379:2015-2026. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1802597.
2. N Engl J Med 2018; 379:2002-2014. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1802598.