Clinic research on Saccharomyces boulardii in preventing and treating antibiotics associated diarrhea in infant pneumonia

Abstract: Objective To investigate the therapeutic effect of Saccharomyces boulardii on antibiotics associated diarrhea(AAD)in infant pneumonia. Methods 302 hospitalized infant patients (1 month-3 years) with pneumonia but without gastroenteric disease were selected, and antibiotics were administrated intravenously at least 5 continuous days for each patient. Patients were all given antibiotics and randomly divided into three groups: control group with no Saccharomyces boulardii administration (group A, 60 cases);Saccharomyces boulardii were applied as addition on the occurrence of diarrhea (group B, 92 cases), and Saccharomyces boulardii and antibiotics were co-administrated (group C, 150 cases). Incidences of AAD in all groups were carefully examined and differences of therapeutic effect between groups were compared and analyzed. Results The incidence of AAD in Group C was significantly lower than that in other groups. In term of diarrhea severity, no significant difference was observed in all groups (P>0.05). However, duration of diarrhea showed significant different between groups (P<0.001): group A with the longest duration and group C with the shortest. The results indicated that the total efficiency of anti-diarrhea in group C was significantly higher than that in control group (P<0.05).However, group B presented no significant difference compared with neither control group nor group C in term of therapeutic effect on diarrhea. Conclusion Administration of Saccharomyces boulardii Sachets could shorten the duration of diarrhea on the occurrence of AAD in infant pneumonia. According to our results, Saccharomyces boulardii was effective in both preventing the development of AAD and shortening duration of diarrhea, and therefore improved therapeutic effect on ADD.