Table 3 Quality of evidence for treatment of diarrhea with probiotics for hospitalizations
From: Systematic review of probiotics for the treatment of community-acquired acute diarrhea in children
Quality assessment | Summary of findings | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Directness | No. of events | Effect | ||||||
No. of studies (study arms) | Design | Limitations | Consistency | Generalizability to population of interest | Generalizability to intervention of interest | Intervention | Control | Relative Risk (95% CI) |
Diarrhea hospitailizations | ||||||||
2(6) | RCT | Not double blinded, small n, 5/6 study arms compared to same control; 0 results statistically significant (-0.5) | Homogeneous based on meta-analysis (p=0.735; I2=0%) | Italy & Belgium (-0.5) | Mixtures prevent analysis of individual effect sizes, not enough data to make a statement about each probiotic strain (-0.5) | 16 | 20 | 0.81 (0.42 – 1.57) |
Hospitalizations (study arm): LGG (1), S. boulardii (1), Bacillus clausii (1), Enterococcus faecium (1), Mix A* (1), Mix C*** (1) | ||||||||