In recent years, the world has been grappling with the challenges posed by COVID-19.
Amidst rising hospital admissions and deaths in the US, especially as people gather for holiday celebrations, a new study brings a ray of hope.
Researchers have found that probiotics, particularly a type called lactobacillus, may help delay COVID-19 infections and lessen symptoms in unvaccinated people who have been exposed to the virus at home.
This study, published in the journal Clinical Nutrition, suggests that probiotics could be a cost-effective and straightforward way to help people after they’ve been exposed to COVID-19.
This finding comes at a crucial time when less than 20% of the US population has received the 2023 updated COVID vaccine.
Probiotics, known for their health benefits, were already being researched for their protective effects against respiratory infections even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Paul Wischmeyer, co-lead author of the study from Duke University, emphasized the urgency of exploring whether probiotics could be an effective intervention against COVID-19.
The research began in March 2020, at a time when COVID-19 vaccines were not widely available in the United States.
It included 182 participants who had not been vaccinated and had been exposed to someone with COVID-19 but hadn’t shown symptoms yet.
The participants were split into two groups: one took a lactobacillus probiotic, and the other took a placebo pill. Importantly, neither the participants nor the study administrators knew who was receiving the actual probiotic.
The results of the study were promising. The group taking the probiotic was 60% less likely to develop COVID-19 symptoms than the placebo group.
Moreover, those taking the probiotic seemed to be able to delay getting infected longer than those who took the placebo.
Previous studies had shown probiotics’ effectiveness against respiratory infections, including a significant study involving infants in India published in Nature in 2017.
Probiotics have also been shown to enhance the effects of vaccines against other viruses, like the flu.
Probiotics work in several ways to improve immune function. They increase the number of regulatory T-cells, reduce inflammatory substances in the body, strengthen the lungs’ defense against infection, and help control the expression of antiviral genes.
Although the study was limited in size, it supports the idea that the good microbes living in our bodies can be valuable allies in fighting COVID-19 and possibly other pandemic diseases in the future.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and how diets could help manage post-COVID syndrome.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about COVID infection and vaccination linked to heart disease, and results showing extracts from two wild plants can inhibit COVID-19 virus.
The research findings can be found in Nature Communications.
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