Safety and efficacy of probiotic supplements as adjunctive therapies in patients with COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Julie Zhu, Tyler Pitre, Carmen Ching, Dena Zeraatkar, Steven Gruchy
PLOS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0278356
Background and aims Oral probiotic supplementation may be a beneficial adjunctive therapy for patients with symptomatic COVID-19. However, its safety and efficacy are unclear. We aimed to investigate how probiotic supplementation impacts COVID-19 symptom trajectory and patient outcomes by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
Methods RCTs randomizing patients with COVID-19 to probiotics were searched in PubMed Central, Embase, CINAHL, and Cochrane Library from inception to July 31, 2022. We performed a random-effects pairwise meta-analysis for all outcomes using the restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimator. We used the GRADE approach to assess the certainty of the evidence.
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