According to a study published in the June 2013 issue of the journal, Open Medicine, 10% of people in the hospital treated with antibiotics will get diarrhea, and 15% of those will be C diff, which often causes severe, even life-threatening, colitis. The authors pooled 16 studies that included 3400 patients and tracked the incidence of those getting diarrhea while hospitalized and separated those who were on probiotics and those who were not. Researchers found that those patients taking probiotics had a statistically significant lower incidence of diarrhea and of C diff infections.
While it is important to publish this information, it is hardly a new concept for those doctors and scientists who understand the complexity, importance, and tenuousness of the ecosystem in the intestinal tract when antibiotic therapy is instigated. To learn more about this topic, check out these URLs:
