Reviews and feature articleProbiotics prevent IgE-associated allergy until age 5 years in cesarean-delivered children but not in the total cohort
Section snippets
Methods
Pregnant mothers whose fetuses were at high risk for allergy (at least 1 parent with doctor-diagnosed asthma, allergic rhinitis, or atopic eczema) were randomized at 35 weeks of gestation to receive probiotics or placebo in a double-blind manner. From 36 weeks of gestation, mothers in the probiotic group took a capsule containing freeze-dried LGG (American Type Culture Collection 53103; 5 × 109 colony-forming units [cfu]), L rhamnosus LC705 (DSM 7061; 5 × 109 cfu), Bifidobacterium breve Bb99
Results
Characteristics of study children are depicted in Table I. Initially, 1223 mothers were randomized. The intent-to-treat infants numbered 1018. Of these infants, 891 (88%) attended the 5-year visit, and participation was unaffected by probiotic intervention (87.9% among the probiotic group vs 87.1% among the placebo group) or allergy status by age 2 years (96.1% among allergic children vs 95.0% among nonallergic children, Fig 1). Mean (SD) age at the 5-year visit was 4.92 (0.09) years in both
Discussion
One month of prenatal dosage for each mother and 6 months of postnatal supplementation for the infants with a combination of 4 probiotic strains and a prebiotic failed to reduce the prevalence of allergic or atopic disease in this large cohort of almost 900 children followed until age 5 years. It affected neither any single allergic symptom (eczema, allergic rhinitis, or asthma) nor IgE sensitization. At age 2 years, we saw a significant reduction in IgE-associated allergic diseases,
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Supported by the Helsinki University Central Hospital Research Funds, the Foundation for Pediatric Research, and Valio, Ltd, Helsinki, Finland. M.K. received part-time and K.K. received monthly salaries from the Clinical Research Institute, Helsinki University Central Hospital, funded by Valio Ltd.
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: R. Korpela and T. Tuure are employees of Valio Ltd, which provided research support for this study. The rest of the authors have declared that they have no conflict of interest.