Probiotics perhaps?
Probiotics, microorganisms that are often called good bacteria because they are similar to beneficial organisms found in humans, are usually discounted as a treatment option by most of organized medicine. At the National Institutes of Health probiotics are listed in the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s website – the place with the NIH relegates Reiki, yoga, and herbal medicine. A study in the medical journal Pediatrics in May is likely to give probiotics a substantial boost. The study analyzed 11 studies for an intestinal condition that often afflicts – and can kill – premature babies. Probiotics were effective, according to the researchers who found that they reduced nearly one in three cases of necrotizing enterocolitis in premies.
Probiotics, microorganisms that are often called good bacteria because they are similar to beneficial organisms found in humans, are usually discounted as a treatment option by most of organized medicine. At the National Institutes of Health probiotics are listed in the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine's website – the place with the NIH relegates Reiki, yoga, and herbal medicine.
But probiotics are slowly gaining respect in some corners of the medical establishment and the public.
A study in the medical journal Pediatrics in May is likely to give probiotics a substantial boost. The study analyzed 11 studies for an intestinal condition that often afflicts – and can kill – premature babies. Probiotics were effective, according to the researchers who found that they reduced nearly one in three cases of necrotizing enterocolitis in premies.
Here are two such studies (also published in Pediatrics) by Taiwanese researchers, one from 2005 and one from 2008. In Monday's Health & Science section my colleague Don Sapatkin wrote a short item on the latest Pediatrics study. Here's a preview for that May 3 piece:
Probiotic bacteria — species that normally live in the body, as opposed to the invaders targeted by antibiotic drugs — are usually considered the realm of "alternative" medicine. They haven't been studied as much as pharmaceuticals, and clear evidence of their benefits is lacking.
But it is growing. In the May issue of Pediatrics, Australian researchers analyzed 11 studies of necrotizing enterocolitis, an intestinal problem with few effective treatments that causes disease and even death among premature babies.
The researchers found that probiotics reduced necrotizing enterocolitis cases by 30 percent, with no major adverse effects. "Withholding probiotics from high-risk neonates," they wrote, "is now almost unethical."
But in a commentary in the same issue, Roger F. Soll of the University of Vermont College of Medicine noted that studies to determine the best probiotic products are needed, as are U.S. regulatory changes to guarantee their quality.