Cochrane Corner: Probiotics in Infants for Prevention of Allergic Disease

IntroductionAllergic diseases, including eczema, food allergy, asthma and allergic rhinitis, represent a significant global health burden and are among the most common chronic conditions affecting children in some regions [1,2].There has been some longstanding interest in findings that the microbial composition of faeces differ between infants with and without allergic disease, especially eczema.One response to this has been to test live microbes (probiotics) in infants to potentially influence their intestinal microbiome and perhaps impact on microbial development [3,4].However, clinical trials findings vary and there has been little replication of positive findings for probiotics [3,4].Recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses have highlighted variability in probiotic strains, dosing regimens, timing of administration and study populations, contributing to inconsistent results across the literature [4,5].