Probioitc use in the prevention of Antibiotic Associated Diarrhe: Clostridium Difficile - Dissertation Example

These are known as conventional means to combat infections that crop up due to extensive take up of antibiotics. Over the years and with growing awareness about the antibiotics associated diarrhoea, probiotics are now being exploited to overcome such conditions and are made available in the form of capsules or as food supplements. Probiotics display little side effects and are gaining prevalence. A scientific basis for the effectiveness of probiotics is difficult to establish but they are prescribed for acute traveller's diarrhoea and also for antibiotic associated diarrhoea and as adjuvant in inflammatory bowel disease.

Antibiotics either used for a short or long interval accompanied diarrhoea. Further hospitalized cases demonstrate diarrhoea associated with antibiotics (Creminini, 2002). Probiotics encompass live microbial cells that influences its host by recuperating the normal microflora. They are called therapeutic agents as they suppress the growth of pathogenic micro-organisms. A number of agents are known to act as probiotics, e.g. Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus, which are generally used in dairy food industry, Bifidobacterium bifidum, B longum, Enterococcus faecium, Saccharomyces boulardii, L acidophilus, L casei (Aloysius, 2002).

Methodology Guiding the Literature Review Literature review performed through the computer based research on Medline to understand the research conducted with probiotics encompassing Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces (Cremonini, 2002). The treatment efficiency was also evaluated by Cremonini et al (2002) by analysing every protocol. The level of significance was then determined for favourable upshots of probiotic treatment for AAD, the results were then combined with relative risk and confidence interval of