In a new study, a group of researchers from Duke Health examined whether probiotics, specifically a type called lactobacillus, help fight against COVID-19.
They decided to find out, especially since COVID was becoming a big problem again in the U.S. Hospitals were filling up, and people were getting sick more often. Plus, not many people had gotten the latest vaccine.
Before COVID came around, doctors already knew that probiotics were good at fighting off other illnesses that affected our breathing.
Paul Wischmeyer, a doctor and a big part of this research, thought it was time to see if probiotics could do the same against COVID.
So, they started their experiment in March 2020, when COVID vaccines weren’t common yet.
They looked for people who hadn’t gotten the vaccine but were around someone who had COVID. They wanted to see if giving these people probiotics could stop them from getting sick.
They found 182 people to join their study. They split them into two groups: one group took the probiotic, and the other group took a pill that didn’t do anything (a placebo). The fun part was, no one knew who was taking what, not even the people running the study!
As they were doing this study, things changed. More people got vaccinated, and COVID cases started to go down for a bit. This meant they had fewer people who could join their study, so they had to finish it earlier than planned.
In the end, they found out something interesting. The people who took the probiotic were less likely to get COVID symptoms.
About 26 out of 100 people in the probiotic group got sick, compared to 43 out of 100 in the other group. Also, those who took the probiotic could fight off the infection longer than those who didn’t.
Even though not as many people in the probiotic group got COVID, the difference wasn’t big enough to be sure it was just because of the probiotic. This was mostly because they couldn’t have as many people in the study as they wanted.
Wischmeyer wasn’t too surprised by this. There were other studies before, like one with babies in India, that showed probiotics were really good at fighting respiratory infections. Some studies even said probiotics could make vaccines work better against viruses like the flu.
He explained that probiotics help our immune system in many ways. They increase good cells in our body, decrease harmful substances, protect our lungs better, and even change how our body’s defense genes work.
Even though their study wasn’t as big as they hoped, it still showed that the tiny microbes living in our body could be big helpers in fighting diseases like COVID-19.
This could be really important for places where not many people can get vaccines or even in the U.S., where not everyone gets their booster shots.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about Vitamin D deficiency linked to severe COVID-19, and how diets could help manage post-COVID syndrome.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
The research findings can be found in Clinical Nutrition.
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