Probiotics for preventing acute upper respiratory tract infections

Abstract

Probiotics were better than placebo in reducing the number of participants experiencing episodes of acute URTIs, the rate ratio of episodes of acute URTI and reducing antibiotic use. This indicates that probiotics may be more beneficial than placebo for preventing acute URTIs. However, the results have some limitations and there were no data for older people.

What do Cochrane systematic reviews say about probiotics as preventive interventions?

“…Four systematic reviews tested their use only among adults, [8][9][10][11] three only among children [12][13][14] and five among both adults and children, [15][16][17][18][19] while another four studies did not specify the age range of the population evaluated. [20][21][22][23] Two systematic reviews addressed prevention of respiratory diseases, 11,15 nine addressed prevention of gastroenterological diseases, 9,10,13,14,[16][17][18]20,21 three addressed gynecological and obstetric diseases, 8,22,23 one addressed urological diseases 19 and one addressed immunological/allergic diseases. 12 A summary of the reviews included is presented below.…”

Prevention and treatment of the common cold: making sense of the evidence

“…A systematic review of 14 RCTs included 10 trials (n = 3451) that provided sufficient data for pooling. 34 Pediatric and adult populations from a wide variety of countries were included. Probiotic prophylaxis reduced the number of participants who had one or more upper respiratory tract infections (odds ratio [OR] 0.58, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.36 to 0.92) and the number of upper respiratory tract infections per person-year (rate ratio 0.88, 95% CI 0.81 to 0.96).…”

Oral <i>Lactobacillus plantarum</i> NCIMB 8825 Inhibits Adhesion, Invasion and Metabolism of <i>Neisseria meningitidis</i> Serogroup B and Affords Anti-Inflammatory and Cytotoxic Protection to Nasopharyngeal Epithelial Cells

“…We find, however, that not all LBs are equal with regard to their probiotic potential in the nasopharynx. Caution should therefore be used when assessing the efficacy of probiotics (reviewed by Hao and colleagues [57]), as protection dentship for KP (from RAE funding by the Higher Education Funding Council of England), which enabled the bioluminescent transformation of Nm with support from VS, using a plasmid kindly provided by Ann-Beth Jonsson from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden; and UWE, Bristol for provision of an Early Researcher Starter Grant to enable LT and VD to explore the protective properties of oral Lactobacilli. The authors are grateful to GJ MacArthur from the University of Bristol for useful comments on the manuscript intracellular NmB light output (Figure 6(d)).…”