Prebiotics To Prevent Allergic Diseases
The bifidogenic effect of human milk is well-known. Prebiotics have long been added to infant milk formulas to mimic these functional characteristics of breast milk . A combination of galacto-oligosaccharide and fructo-oligosaccharide was prebiotic of choice in a number of intervention trials. Acidic oligosaccharides , polydextrose , different content of lactose, oligofructose plus inulin have also been tested . Modification of intestinal microbiota represents the principal way by which this effect has been orchestrated and has been reported in several studies . The 2-fucosyllactose human milk oligosaccharide , the most plentiful HMO in most human milk, has been recently synthesized and is now commercially available in few supplemented infant formulas, bringing the composition closer to human milk .
Table 1. Prebiotics administration in prevention of allergic disorders.
However, other trials did not confirm these positive results . In a study , evaluating preterm, low birth weight infants fed with a formula containing a prebiotic mixture , there was no difference in the prevalence of AD and bronchial hyper-reactivity. In another study a partially hydrolyzed formula supplemented with specific oligosaccharides induced immunomodulatory effects, such as increased regulatory T-cell numbers, in infants at increased risk of allergy, but was not able to reduce AD incidence at 12 or 18 months compared with standard formula-fed infants.
Differences Between Protocol And Review
The review contains post-hoc subgroup analysis on suspected CMA and diagnosed CMA infants. During data extraction, the authors noted that some studies involved participants diagnosed with CMA through the double-blind placebo-controlled food challenge, which is the gold standard. Some studies involved participants suspected to have CMA through clinical diagnosis alone. Subgroup analysis was done to evaluate the possible effect of this difference in population. The rest of the review is in accordance with the protocol created by the authors.
When Do Seasonal Allergies Start
Seasonal allergies, also known as hay fever or allergic rhinitis result from exposure to airborne substances that appear during certain times of the year. The most common culprits for seasonal allergies are pollens, mold spores and grasses. Depending on where you live, pollens may also vary by the season. Sometimes they can start as early as December, but in most parts of North America, seasonal allergy symptoms start in the early spring through summer and to late fall .
Seasonal allergies can start at any age, so if your child suddenly has a sneezing fit after running through a field of weeds, it may be that they have developed allergies. Furthermore, symptoms can come on suddenly, and last as long as they are continuously exposed to the allergens. It can be hard to discern whether your child’s runny nose is the result of allergies or a cold, but if you find they develop colds around the same time every year, seasonal allergies may be to blame. When in doubt – especially in these cautious times – always consult your healthcare provider.
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The Importance Of Probiotics For Kids
Some of the benefits of probiotics for children include helping with eczema/rashy skin, supporting healthy immune system function , digestive functioning, and a host of other benefits. Ensuring your child’s microbiome maintains an adequate balance of probiotics is especially important, and creates a solid foundation for healthy living.
Clinical pharmacist Dr. James LaValle explains: The beneficial human strains naturally found in your gut dont simply combat pathogens. They also help your body synthesize vitamins, absorb nutrients, help with detoxification and environmental pollutants as well as hormones and they interact directly with your immune system to improve your overall health.
Your Guide To: Probiotics For Children
Tags: Pre & Probiotics
This article was made possible due to an unrestricted educational grant from Activia. Written in collaboration with Dragana Skokovic-Sunjic BScPh RPh NCMP, AEProbio
As a parent, you want to give your baby the best start in life. You are conscious of your babys health and development and want to ensure they grow up happy and healthy. There is a lot of talk today about a healthy gut being the foundation for a healthy child and how probiotics can build up your babys gut health.
If you didnt know, probiotics are defined as Live microorganisms which, when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host. In plain language, probiotics are good microbes that are meant to help the person taking them. These friendly microbes help us digest food, maintain health and fight disease. Many Canadians are hearing about how great probiotics are, and are looking to supplement their diet with them.
Not every child will need to be given probiotic. Early life exposures to microbes in the world we live in, playing outside, having a pet, eating variety of food are all factors supporting good gut microbes and in turn good health.
Evidence supports using specific probiotics as an intervention in treating or preventing very specific childhood conditions, not as a general health supplement
For probiotics in children and young adults, clinical evidence supports the use of probiotics as an intervention for:
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This probiotic powder for kids features two billion probiotics in four strains of good gut bacteria.
It also contains added prebiotics and vitamin C, which sets it aside from many others on this list and helps your little ones in numerous ways including by supporting their immune system.
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A Study Sixyears In The Making
Could this bacterial imbalance, or dysbiosis, be the reason so many children are developing food allergies today? To find out, Chatila and his co-authors embarked on a study that took six years to complete.
Rima Rachid
Rachid began by studying the evolution of gut bacteria in babies with and without food allergies. She and her team collected stool samples from 56 food-allergic patients and 98 matched controls. Georg Gerber and his colleagues at Brigham and Womens Hospital then analyzed those samples for changes in their bacterial content. These studies established that the bacteria in the feces of babies with food allergies were different from those of controls. But did those bacterial differences play a role in their food allergies?
Tofind out, the team transplanted fecal bacteria from the babies into a special strainof allergy-prone mice. They fed the mice small doses of chicken egg protein tosensitize their immune systems to this allergen, then challenged the mice witha large dose.
Theresults: Mice that had been given fecal bacteria from food-allergic babies wentinto anaphylaxis, while those given fecal bacteria from healthy babies did not.This was an important clue that dysbiosis was having an effect, Chatila says. Thefecal bacteria from food-allergic subjects did not protect against foodallergy, whereas the bacteria from control subjects did.
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How Do Intestinal Bacteria Help Allergies
Although no one knows for sure why probiotics have anti-allergy and anti-inflammatory effects, some laboratory studies suggest that the presence of healthy intestinal bacteria may increase levels of chemicals that are responsible for keeping the immune system in check. A properly controlled immune system is less likely to be triggered by particles in the environment like dust, pollen, and animal dander.
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These probiotics for kids contains five billion live bacteria cultures in two probiotic strains, as well as a prebiotic to help nourish the beneficial bacteria in your childrens gut.
Its suitable for non-dairy kids, free from major food allergens and suitable for vegans. As a powder, it can also be easily mixed into drinks, added to yoghurt or sprinkled on top of cereals and porridge.
It may not contain a huge diverse number of bacterial strains, but the brand promotes the formula as being able to naturally help with a range of issues including diarrhoea, constipation, bloating, belly pain and colic, too.
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The 10 Best Probiotics For Kids In 2022
- The 10 Best Probiotics For Kids in 2022HIDE
Thousands of years ago the great Greek physician Hippocrates stated that all disease begins in the gut. Today, we have countless studies to back his claims. There are connections between immune health and our mind.
Gut health is the key to our physical and mental health. The areas of wellness, as we understand, are intimately connected. What then can be more disheartening than watching as your child suffers from gastrointestinal distress?
Today, the almost negligent use of antibiotics is a root cause of GI upset. Ear nose and throat problems are very common issues that stem from poor gut flora at birth. This has happened with an increase in unnecessary cesarean births.
When a child does not pass through the birth canal of its mother, the infant actually misses the first dose of probiotics. From there, for a myriad of health reasons mothers are unable to breastfeed, meaning young infants often miss essential probiotics like B. infantis among others during a very crucial developmental stage.
During the early stages of life when a babys innate immune system is forming, children who start off with fewer probiotics are more prone to ENT infections which are commonly treated with antibiotics. Additionally, antibiotics are offered for ear infections, chest infections, and what eventually becomes Strep and even pneumonia.
Ranking Methodology
Data Collection And Analysis
Study selection
Two independent authors reviewed the studies collected from the electronic and manual searches. Initial screening through evaluation of the titles and abstracts was done. Studies which matched the pre-specified selection criteria were included in the second screening, where the full-text articles were retrieved and appraised.
Disagreements from the screening process were discussed until resolved. If consensus was not reached, an independent third party reviewer was consulted. A sample of the screening form used is shown in Additional file : Appendix S1.
Data extraction and management
The following data were extracted from each study by two independent reviewers: 1.) author, 2.) year of publication, 3.) setting, 4.) study population size, 5.) type of food allergy, 6.) probiotic strain, 7.) control used, and 8.) outcome evaluated. In case of disagreement, the reviewers consulted each other to arrive at a consensus. If consensus was not reached, an independent third party reviewer was consulted. A sample of the data abstraction form used is shown in Additional file : Appendix S2.
Assessment of risk of bias in included studies
All studies were included in the systematic review regardless of level of appraisal. Sensitivity analysis excluding studies with high risk of bias in the domains of randomization, blinding of participants, personnel or outcome assessment, or attrition, was done to evaluate the impact of these studies on the over-all results.
Data synthesis
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The Connection Between Microbiota And Allergies
While we know when and how allergies occur, there’s another interesting piece of the puzzle to examine: the link between gut microbiota and allergies. Several studies have looked at differences in the gut microbiota of allergic and non-allergic children and found that low gut microbial diversity is linked to increased allergic inflammation. Furthermore, immunologists have suggested that the microbiome should be considered a therapeutic target for treating inflammatory diseases, such as allergies. In other words, exposure to good bacteria, whether through food, the natural environment or supplementation will help alter the allergic response and the severity of allergic symptoms.
Are Probiotics Safe For Kids Heres What You Need To Know
You may have passed them in the health food aisle at your local grocery store or seen a reference to them in your favorite healthy living blog probiotics.
Many adults use these supplements to help regulate their digestive systems. Some claim that probiotics can help with conditions like eczema and even yeast infections.
But probiotics dont always work the same for children.
Probiotics are useful for keeping your digestive tract healthy, says Dr. Joy Drass, pediatrician at Geisinger Port Matilda. But its important to know which probiotics you can give to your child, since they may not work the same way they do in adults.
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Probiotic For Babies May Not Fight Allergies Later
By Amy Norton, Reuters Health
4 Min Read
NEW YORK – Kindergartners who were given good bacteria supplements as infants were no less likely to suffer from allergies than other kids in a new study from Australia.
The findings, reported in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, add to a mixed bag of results from research into whether probiotics can help ward off kids allergies.
Based on whats known so far, it may be that only certain probiotics are helpful for certain kids – but even then, the benefit seems very modest, according to Dr. Sonia Michail, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles who was not involved in the work.
The 123 kids in this study, which was led by Marie P. Jensen of the University of Western Australia in Perth, were part of a clinical trial as infants, when researchers randomly assigned half to take a probiotic supplement every day for the first six months of life. The rest of the babies were given a placebo.
All of the babies were considered to be at increased risk of allergies because their mothers suffered from them.
In earlier studies, the researchers found no benefits of the probiotic when the babies were 1 to 2.5 years old.
This latest report finds still no effects at the age of 5. Of 66 kids who had received the probiotic in infancy, 44 percent had some type of allergy – such as nasal allergies, food allergies or asthma. That compared with 38 percent of 57 kids who got the placebo.
Potential Biases In The Review Process
Selection bias was controlled by clearly establishing and following the inclusion and exclusion criteria during the search of articles. Only randomized controlled trials were included in this review. Two authors conducted independent systematic search and screening of the articles. Disagreements were resolved through discussion. Publication bias was controlled by searching for unpublished articles through writing to experts, correspondence with pharmaceutical industries, and surveying conference proceedings and books of abstracts. Furthermore, the authors of the included studies were contacted to verify and complete the data needed for the review.
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Probiotics Can Help Peanut Allergies In Kids Says New Study
A new study reveals that a particular class of bacteria may protect against allergies. The study showed that administration of a probiotic with peanut oral immunotherapy* increased sustained unresponsiveness in children with peanut allergy. This ties in nicely with a growing theory that a possible cause of the growing incidents of allergies in children is a link to gut bacteria.
The statistics1 are alarming. 6-8% of children in the UK have proven food allergies and hospital admissions for food allergies have increased by 500% since 1990. For a while scientists were perplexed by this rapid and alarming rise in food allergies. More recently however, research is showing a strong link between our gut bacteria, our microbiome , and our allergies. The 21st century has influenced our microbiome with our increase in hygiene, caesarean births, and also the huge increase in intake of antibiotics which are known to harm our gut bacteria. Not only this but our diet has changed a lot in the last century – bringing with it a large increase in intake of wheat, other grains, and of course sugar. These are not easy foods for our bodies to digest and can therefore impact on our gut health, again contributing towards an impaired microbiome. Additionally to this, an impaired microbiome is thought to contribute towards an increased permeable gut wall which in turn is linked to an increased likelihood of allergies.
Do Probiotics Really Work
Although probiotics are still widely considered to be an alternative allergy treatment, research shows that they can have a very positive and very significant effect on allergic rhinitis symptoms.
Not only do studies suggest that allergic rhinitis sufferers who take probiotics enjoy a greater quality of life overall than those who do not, but there is also evidence to suggest that probiotics could reduce the number of allergic rhinitis episodes experienced each year, thereby reducing the need for traditional treatments.
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Summary Of Main Results
The main results of this systematic review are shown in the evidence profile and summary of findings table generated using Gradepro GDT .
Table 2 Summary of Findings
This meta-analysis summarized the available evidence on use of probiotics for treating children with food allergy. Only studies on CMA were analyzed since no studies were found on probiotics as treatment for other types of food allergy among children.
In general, the pooled risk ratio from the studies favors the use of probiotics in CMA in reducing SCORAD scores and inducing tolerance, but the wide CI indicates that probiotics may in fact have no difference from placebo and precludes definite conclusions to be made. These findings are moreover tempered by significant heterogeneity. Although probiotics have been shown to have immunomodulating effects on humans , pooled evidence from available RCTs do not definitively demonstrate this effect. Good quality studies with larger sample size are needed to narrow the confidence interval.
Based on a pre-planned subgroup analysis for probiotic strains, pooled studies with moderate quality show that the LGG strain is effective in inducing tolerance among infants with suspected CMA. This finding illustrates the variation of treatment effect depending on the probiotic strain or mixture of strains used.
