A new study from Washington University School of Medicine has found that commonly used probiotic is not effective in improving symptoms in children with gastroenteritis. These results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine. It is found that about 1.7 million pediatric emergency hospital visits and more than 70,000 hospitalizations each year are due to gastroenteritis. In this study, nearly 1,000 children aged between 3 months to 4 years were involved.
These children have symptoms of gastroenteritis like watery stools, vomiting, diarrhea or other signs of acute intestinal infection. Half of the children were randomly assigned to receive the probiotic Lactobacillus GG twice daily for five days and others took the placebo. They found that regardless of whether the children took a placebo or probiotic, their symptoms and recovery were nearly identical. In the end, the…
