Efficacy of Probiotics in Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Review (82 trials, n=10,332) found some combinations of probiotics or strains may be beneficial, but certainty in the evidence for efficacy by GRADE criteria was low to very low across almost all of the analyses, and only 24 RCTs were at low risk of bias across all domains.

SPS commentary:

For global symptoms, there was moderate certainty for benefit of Escherichia strains, low certainty for Lactobacillus strains and Lactobacillus plantarum 299V, and very low certainty for combination probiotics and Bacillus strains. For abdominal pain, there was low certainty for benefit of Saccharomyces cerevisiae I-3856 and Bifidobacterium strains, and very low certainty for combination probiotics, Lactobacillus, Saccharomyces, and Bacillus strains.

Gastroenterology