Food poisoning makes about 48 million people sick every year in the U.S., and the alternative health community believes probiotics can help treat the symptoms.
Food poisoning is a serious problem — of the millions who get sick from eating bad food, about 128,000 end up hospitalized and about 3,000 die,
according to the Centers for Disease Control. It is most often caused by bacteria and viruses, although it also can be caused by parasites, molds, toxins, allergens, and contaminants,
FoodSafety.gov, a website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said.
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Probiotics, often called "good" bacteria, are
defined by the World Health Organization as "live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host." Some foods contain probiotics naturally and companies have begun supplementing foods with probiotics. In addition, many people are taking probiotics as supplements.
Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center reported that probiotics may help in treating some symptoms of food poisoning. "Probiotics, such as Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus, can help restore the balance of good bacteria in the intestine," the center's website said.
Most of the research into the effects of probiotics is in its infancy, although studies have found specific strains of probiotics to be effective in treating diarrhea in some conditions, according to a
report in the Bioengineered journal, and that may be why some think these good bacteria will help with food poisoning.
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Initial studies, many done in mice, are bearing out that finding. Bioengineered said studies showed probiotics had positive effects in fighting at least two common causes of food poisoning, those from salmonella and campylobacter.
Another
Purdue University study reported potential for the use of probiotics capsules to treat listeria infections, which kill more than 1,000 people each year.
In that study, it appeared that the "good" probiotic bacteria adhered to the intestinal walls, taking up space so that the "bad" Listeria bacteria did not have a place to stick to the cell walls, the Purdue report said.
Even as researchers begin to make inroads into understanding how probiotics work, many challenges exist in determining which strains of probiotics are effective in treating the many kinds of food-borne pathogens, what an appropriate dosage is, and in making probiotic medical treatments that are stable and safe.
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