Probiotics, with special emphasis on their role in the management of irritable bowel syndrome

The scientific literature on probiotics commences with the Russian Nobel laureate, Elie Metchnikoff, who suggested that ingestion of lactic acid-producing bacteria, such as that found in yoghurt, was a protective factor, enhancing longevity and potentially beneficial in treating digestive diseases.1 Probiotic research is a relatively young, but rapidly expanding field. By mid-2010, there were 7 180 publications in the PubMed database, of which 26% (1 863) were reviews. By comparison, the search term “antibiotics” yielded 509 728 publications, of which 8.5% (43 515) were reviews. Therefore, it can be concluded that the field of probiotics does not suffer from too few reviews, but rather from insufficient original research.2