Clinical Use of Probiotics: What Physicians Need to Know

摘要

Interest in probiotics has grown recently, fueled in part by commercial developments, but more importantly by an increasing number of published clinical studies documenting health benefits, which include intestinal and extraintestinal targets.3,4 Additionally, the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research (http:/ihroadmap.nih.gov/hmp) now lists characterizing the human microbiome and analyzing its role in human health as a key priority. There are many studies on probiotics that evaluate drug end points, including reducing duration of infectious diarrhea, extending remission in pouchitis, treating symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, reducing side effects of antibiotic treatment, reducing incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis in premature infants, and improving treatment outcome for bacterial vaginosis.