Friendly gut bacteria can help fight infant deaths

Infant deaths from sepsis (bacterial infection of the blood) can be reduced almost by half with doses of healthy gut bacteria, according to the results of a randomised trial conducted in India’s Odisha state by researchers at the College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center in the United States.

Lactobacillus from a commercially-sold nutritional supplement tablet. Image credit: Bob Blaylock/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Results of the study show that when a ‘synbiotic’ combination of a probiotic strain of the gut bacterium Lactobacillus plantarum and a carbohydrate that promotes healthy bacteria was given to neo-natal infants for a week, the incidence of sepsis can be reduced.

Sepsis is responsible for a million infant deaths per year, most of them in the developing world, but options to prevent it are limited.

The study involved monitoring 4,556 infants — some placed randomly in a group that received the synbiotic and another group on a placebo — for over two months. Sepsis or death occurred in nine per cent of the placebo group and in just 5.4 per cent of the synbiotic group, showing a reduction of 40 per cent.

Synbiotic interventions can be provided universally in South Asian countries where public health resources are limited. (SciDev.Net)

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