TY - JOUR AU - Martinelli, Massimo AU - Banderali, Giuseppe AU - Bobbio, Marisa AU - Civardi, Elisa AU - Chiara, Alberto AU - D’Elios, Sofia AU - Lo Vecchio, Andrea AU - Olivero, Mattia AU - Peroni, Diego AU - Romano, Claudio AU - Stronati, Mauro AU - Turra, Renato AU - Viola, Irene AU - Staiano, Annamaria AU - Villani, Alberto PY - 2020 DA - 2020/07/25 TI - Probiotics’ efficacy in paediatric diseases: which is the evidence? A critical review on behalf of the Italian Society of Pediatrics JO - Italian Journal of Pediatrics SP - 104 VL - 46 IS - 1 AB - During the last decade several paediatric studies have been published with different possible indications for probiotics, leading to a global increase of probiotics’ market. Nevertheless, different study designs, multiple single/combined strains and small sample size still leave many uncertainties regarding their efficacy. In addition, different regulatory and quality control issues make still very difficult the interpretation of the clinical data. The objective of this review is to critically summarise the current evidence on probiotics’ efficacy and safety on a different number of pathologies, including necrotizing enterocolitis, acute infectious diarrhoea, allergic diseases and functional gastrointestinal disorders in order to guide paediatric healthcare professionals on using evidence-based probiotics’ strains. To identify relevant data, literature searches were performed including Medline-PubMed, the Cochrane Library and EMBASE databases. Considering probiotics strain-specific effects, the main focus was on individual probiotic strains and not on probiotics in general. SN - 1824-7288 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13052-020-00862-z DO - 10.1186/s13052-020-00862-z ID - Martinelli2020 ER -