The following is a transcript of this podcast:
This is NutraIngredients’s Snack Size Science. I’m Stephen Daniells - bringing you the week’s top science in digestible amounts.
This week we look at the potential of probiotics to protect our little bundles of joy from infection.
Coughs and sneezes may well spread diseases, but daily probiotics may cut the risk of getting the infections in the first place suggest new findings from Scandinavia.
Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland and probiotics player Chr. Hansen developed a new delivery system for their Bifidobacterium animalis strains – in the form of pacifiers, or dummies to my British mum.
According to findings published in the British Journal of Nutrition, only 65 percent of infants who received daily doses of the probiotics via a specially designed pacifier experienced respiratory illnesses, compared with 94 percent of infants in the control group.
It’s not the first time that probiotics have been reported to cut infections in babies – only recently we reported on a study from Probi that found Lactobacillus strains may reduce the incidence of acquiring the common cold by 12 percent.
More studies are needed but the signs are positive for probiotics and the immune health of infants during those vulnerable early days. A healthy baby is a happy baby, and that’s good news for everyone.
For NutraIngredients Snack Size Science, I’m Stephen Daniells.