Probiotic bacteria inhabit the gastrointestinal tracts of healthy individuals and may improve the health status of patients with digestive disease. Viral infection is a leading cause of diarrhea in childhood in developed and developing country. Evidence suggests that probiotics can be beneficial in the management and prevention of viral diarrhea. Previous literature had reported that feeding an infant formula with probiotics can reduce the incidence of diarrhea and rotavirus shedding in infants. Another study suggests that children receiving a probiotics-supplemented oral rehydration solution may be effective in shorten the duration of diarrhea.
There are several reasons why the public are seeking alternative forms of therapy to prevent and to treat disease states. For example, an increase in antibiotic resistant to infections, particularly gastrointestinal infections, because of the inadvertent use of antibiotics by physicians and the excessive use of antibiotics in the live stock industry to improve meat and dairy production has prompted the pubic to seek safer ways to treat infections. Probiotics are live flora given in oral quantities that allow for colonization of the colon. They provide health benefits to the host by a stimulation of metabolic activities or by protection against conditions such as intestinal infection, food allergies and colon cancer.
Probiotics are considered to be beneficial in the management of gastroenteritis. The mechanism by which probiotics bacteria can inhabit the gastrointestinal tracts of healthy individuals and exert their beneficial effects is unclear. They may do so by enhancing host immunity, inhibiting bacterial epithelial and mucosal adherence, inhibiting epithelial invasion, and/or producing antimicrobial substances.
Probiotics offer a broad range of potential health benefits, such as protection against infectious diarrhea, necrotizing enterocolitis, inflammatory bowel disease, and H. pylori infection. Probiotics can help stabilize the intestinal microbial environment, the intestine’s permeability barrier and modulate protective systemic and mucosal immune responses. There is also additional in vitro and in vivo data to support that probiotics provide a health benefit. Moreover, further studies to determine the mechanisms and clinical benefits of probiotics on gastrointestinal tract are needed. With additional multicenter clinical trial confirmations, probiotics may become more popular in the care of human being. |
