Efficacy of probiotics in the prevention of diarrhea in ventilated critically ill ICU patients: meta-analysis of randomized control trials

Shimizu, Kentaro; Hirose, Tomoya; Ogura, Hiroshi

We comment on the study by Batra et al. on the efficacy of probiotics in the prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia in critically ill ICU patients. They also reported that probiotics administration was not associated with a statistically significant reduction in the incidence of diarrhea (OR 0.59; CI 0.34, 1.03; P = 0.06; I(2) = 38%). However, their meta-analysis missed one RCT, and when we repeated the analysis including this RCT, we found that probiotics administration significantly reduced the incidence of diarrhea (OR 0.51; CI 0.28, 0.92; P = 0.02; I(2) = 45.6%). We thus believe that probiotics administration is effective in reducing the incidence of diarrhea in ventilated critically ill ICU patients.