Oral probiotics: Lactobacillus sporogenes for prevention of necrotizing enterocolitis in very low-birth weight infants: a randomized, controlled trial

Probiotic Use for the Prevention of Necrotizing Enterocolitis in Preterm Infants

“…The results of the study performed by Sari et al (38) suggested a trend toward lower incidence of NEC and, death or NEC, although the difference was not statistically significant. None of the L. sporogenes-supplemented fed infants died from NEC; they could not find significant difference in severity of NEC or in mortality rate attributable to NEC between the probiotics and control groups.…”

“…Sari et al (38) also did not show that L. sporogenes reduced the incidence of sepsis in VLBW infants. Sepsis has a complex pathogenesis that is favored by many factors (that is, immune deficiencies of preterm infants, type and frequency of invasive procedures and so on) that cannot be influenced by probiotic administration.…”

“…The other authors did not observe sepsis attributable to probiotics in the studies (28,44,45). Sari et al (38) observed no cases of sepsis or other adverse effects, such as diarrhea, flatulence attributable to probiotic supplementation.…”

“…Whenever intestinal microflora reduces, antigen transport is increased indicating that the normal gut microflora maintains gut defenses (31). Several studies have specially assessed the colonization pattern and the incidence of NEC in preterm infants supplemented with various probiotics (19,(36)(37)(38). (Table 1) A randomized controlled trial found that infants whose feed was supplemented with Bifidobacterium breve had higher rates of fecal bifidobacterial colonization at 2 weeks of age (73 vs. 12 %), improved weight gain and had feeding tolerance.…”

Probiotics and Oxidative Stress

“…A separate meta-analysis of RCTs has shown a variety of probiotics to be effective in the treatment of infective diarrhea in both adults and children (Allen et al, 2011) acute waterly diarrhoea (Dutta et al, 2011), C. difficile diarrhoea (Plummer et al, 2004), ulcerative colitis and necrotizing enterocolitis (Sari et al, 2011). There is also support from RCTs for the efficacy of a probiotic mix in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (Kajander et al, 2007;Hovyeda et al, 2009).…”