ABSTRACT

Background: Respiratory tract infection is a disease that can result in high mortality and morbidity. Factors related with severe respiratory infections in children comprise the age of young children, male sex, malnutrition, incomplete vaccination status and breastfeeding only children. This analysis targets the Role of multi-strain probiotics as supportive therapy in reducing the frequency and severity of respiratory infections among children.

Place and Duration: In the Pediatric Medicine department of Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Karachi for six months duration from January 2021 to June 2021.

Methods: This was a randomized controlled study in 74 children aged 2 months to 5 years with respiratory infections receiving standard therapy and multi strains probiotics versus standard therapy and placebo. The assessment regarding treatment was done in both groups. Results following 7 days of adjuvant treatment alienated into group I (n = 37) (standard therapy and multi strains probiotics) and II Group (n = 37) (placebo and standard therapy). The factors evaluated in this analysis included subject characteristics, duration of stay, duration of fever, dyspnea, withdrawal, C-reactive protein, rales, breast history and probiotics use. The analysis of data was accomplished using SPSS version 20.0.

Results: The males were 51.4% and females were 49.6%), breastfeeding (83.8% in Group-I vs 67.6% in Group-II), children who were not malnourished (81.1% in Group-I vs 86.5% in Group-II), and children who completed vaccination history (91.9% in Group-I versus 78.4% in Group-II). As shown in Table 1 in groups I and II, correspondingly, the mean concentration of CRP in subjects diagnosed with respiratory infections was not statistically significant in 1^st group (30.10 (20.01-44.60 mg / l), relative to Group II (28.23 (19.20-46.12 mg / l), respectively (P = 0.39).Multivariate analysis with Ancova showed that probiotics can significantly decrease the time of Rale by 5.84 hours (p = 0.021, CI 95% -10.90 - (- 0.87).

Conclusions: In this study, it was found that multi strains probiotic therapy significantly reduced the duration of Rale among children with infections of the upper respiratory tract.