Treating asthma patients with probiotics: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Level 1 - systematic review of randomized trials
Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
PubMed 37073761 · doi:10.20960/nh.04360
What was done
A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials identified from PubMed, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and Web of Science evaluating probiotics for asthma treatment. Outcomes included fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO), asthma symptom severity, Childhood Asthma Control Test (CACT) scores, acute asthma exacerbation frequency, FEV1, and FEV1/FVC ratio. Meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.4 to compute mean differences (MD) or odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).
What was found
Ten randomized controlled trials involving 1,101 participants were analyzed. The probiotic group demonstrated significant improvements over controls in FeNO (MD = -7.17, 95% CI: -12.81 to -1.54), asthma symptom severity (MD = -0.07, 95% CI: -0.10 to -0.04), CACT score (MD = 2.26, 95% CI: 1.14 to 3.39), and acute asthma episodes (OR = 0.30, 95% CI: 0.19 to 0.47). Probiotics showed no significant effect on FEV1 (MD = 0.11, 95% CI: -0.05 to 0.26) or FEV1/FVC (%) (MD = 0.32, 95% CI: -1.48 to 2.12).
Why it matters
This review suggests probiotics may serve as an adjunctive option to attenuate airway inflammation and reduce exacerbation rates in asthma, despite exerting no detectable benefit on spirometric lung function parameters.
Limits
The abstract lacks details on probiotic strains, doses, intervention durations, baseline asthma severity, and age breakdown (beyond inclusion of the pediatric CACT metric). Heterogeneity metrics, risk of bias assessments, and adverse events were not reported.
Cited by
- supports Probiotic strains have demonstrated therapeutic effects in clinical trials for childhood diarrhea and asthma.