Probiotic use may reduce antibiotic prescriptions

BioGaia’s probiotic L. reuteri DSM 17938 was included in a review article concluding, “Use of probiotics is linked to reduced need for antibiotic treatment in infants and children”.

“Given this finding, potentially one way to reduce the use of antibiotics is to use probiotics on a regular basis,” says the study’s senior investigator, Daniel Merenstein, MD, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine.

The study, supported in part by the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics and published in the European Journal of Public Health, found that when the results from 12 studies were pooled together, infants and children were 29 percent less likely to have been prescribed antibiotics if they received probiotics as a daily health supplement. When the analysis was repeated with only the highest quality studies, this percentage increased to 53 percent. 

Read the whole article here.