Probiotic and prebiotic supplementation for the prevention of neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis

Arginine supplementation for neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis: are we ready?

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is one of the most common, deadliest and enigmatic intestinal problems encountered by premature infants (Neu, 1996, 2005). The precise pathophysiology of NEC is unclear, but major factors thought to play an important role include an immature intestine, the propensity toward an over-reactive inflammatory response to intestinal microbes, and a cascade of events tha...

Neonatal Necrotizing Enterocolitis

Neonatal Necrotizing Enterocolitis

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a gastrointestinal disease that mostly affects premature infants. It involves infection and inflammation that causes destruction of the bowel. Although it affects only 1 in 2,000 to 4,000 births, or between 1 and 5% of neonatal intensive care unit admissions, NEC is the most common and serious gastrointestinal disorder among hospitalized preterm infants. We pr...

Probiotics for the prevention of necrotizing enterocolitis.

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality for low birth weight premature infants. Prematurity, ischemia, formula feeding, and bacterial colonization are risk factors for the self-perpetuating cycle of damaged intestinal epithelia, inflammation, bacterial entry, sepsis, and shock that characterizes NEC. Probiotics are food supplements containing live ...

Probiotics and the prevention of necrotizing enterocolitis.

matory response of the immature intestinal immune system, resulting in rapidly evolving intestinal gangrene, perforation, sepsis, shock and death [1, 2, 4] . Probiotics have been shown to be able to modify both the intestinal microbiota as well as the intestinal immune response. On this background, several clinical trials have been carried out in order to investigate the potential role of probi...