Italian doctors conducted a clinical study and found that children who took probiotics during ARVI had a fever that lasted an average of three days, while in the placebo group, which did not receive probiotics, it lasted an average of five days. The work was published in JAMA Network Open.
Children under five years of age suffer from acute respiratory viral infections five to eight times a year on average. Symptoms of acute respiratory viral infections usually increase by the 3rd-5th day and disappear after two weeks. In addition to catarrhal symptoms, an elevated body temperature usually appears, which significantly affects the child's well-being. At the moment, there are no recommended methods for routine treatment of acute respiratory viral infections - as a rule, symptomatic treatment is carried out. Antipyretics reduce the temperature, but do not shorten the duration of the infection.
In recent years, probiotics have increasingly been used in pediatrics, mainly to alleviate gastrointestinal symptoms. The connection between intestinal microbiota and inflammatory processes and immunity, however, opens up the potential for their use in the treatment of acute respiratory viral infections.
Italian doctors led by Gregorio Paolo Milani from the Maggiore Hospital in Milan conducted a clinical trial of a probiotic mixture containing Bifidobacterium breve M-16V, Bifidobacterium lactis HN019, Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001 in the treatment of children with upper respiratory tract infections. The study included children from 28 days old to 4 years old with a temperature of over 38.5 degrees Celsius and upper respiratory tract infection.
Sixty-three children were given a probiotic mixture for two weeks, while 65 children were given a placebo. The average fever duration in the probiotic group was three days, compared with five days in the placebo group. Poisson regression showed that probiotic treatment was associated with a reduction in fever duration. Adverse events (constipation and abdominal pain) were comparable in both groups.
The study has some shortcomings: the temperature was measured by the children's guardians, not doctors, and the probiotics were given at different stages of the infection. Despite this, the authors of the article believe that probiotics can be considered as a potential useful supplement to the symptomatic treatment of ARVI.
Adding probiotics to the diet is being studied in a variety of conditions, such as pregnancy. A systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials by Australian and Swiss researchers found no evidence of benefit from probiotics in this population.