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Diarrhea is considered as an important cause of morbidity and mortality, even though one of the main reasons of death following diarrhea is initiated by dysentery. In recent years, the consumption of probiotics has been proposed for the treatment of infectious diarrhea. Despite most of the studies on probiotics have focused on acute watery diarrhea, few studies in the field of dysentery have found beneficial effects of probiotics. This study is a randomized double-blind clinical trial. The patients were randomly placed into control and case groups. In the intervention group, the patients received probiotics in the form of Kidilact® sachet, which contained high amounts of 7-strain friendly bacteria strains of Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Bifidobacterium infantis, Bifidobacterium breve, and Streptococcus thermophiles. On the other hand, the patients in the control group received placebo sachets on a daily basis for 5 days. It is notable that the treatment protocol of acute dysentery was done on both groups. The results of this study showed significant differences in the duration of blood in diarrhea between probiotic consumers (2.62 days) and the control group (3.16 days) (P value = 0.05). Additionally, significant differences in the average length of hospitalization in probiotic consumers (3.16 days) and control (3.66 days), (P value = 0.02) could be claimed that the consumption of probiotics is effective in reducing the duration of dysentery and diarrhea. The results of this study suggest that the use of probiotics can be effective in reducing the duration of blood in diarrhea. This study was also recorded in the Iran center of clinical trials registration database (IRCT2014060617985N1).

Background Mucorales are opportunistic pathogens that can cause life‐threatening diseases predominantly in immunocompromised patients. Objectives This study aimed to investigate the frequency, seasonal variation and antifungal susceptibility of pathogenic Mucorales in the soil collected from seven hospitals in Urmia, Iran, between November 2017 and July 2018 in four different seasons. Methods Mucorales isolates obtained from soil were characterised based on conventional and molecular assays. In addition, in vitro antifungal susceptibility was performed using the CLSI M38Ed3 procedure. Results Out of 196 tested soil samples, 80 (40.8%) samples were positive for mucoralean fungi. Rhizopus arrhizus var. arrhizus (n = 47) was the most frequent species followed by Mucor circinelloides (n = 21) and Cunninghamella echinulata (n = 6). A seasonal variation in the frequency of Mucorales in soil was detected with a maximum of culture‐positive soil samples detected in wet autumn (43.2%) followed by winter (23.4%), summer (19.7%) and spring (13.6%). In vitro antifungal susceptibility testing for 80 environmental isolates exhibited MIC of ≤2 μg/ml for amphotericin B indicating the smallest range of MIC variation among the tested Mucorales (range: 0.125–2 μg/ml). Among the azoles, posaconazole was the most effective antifungals (GM MIC, 0.724 μg/ml). Conclusions We considered associations of species and seasonal frequencies between soil mucoralean fungi and mucormycosis. The effect of opportunistic Mucorales dominating in the soil and prevalent causative agents of mucormycosis in Iran reported in the literatures but more comprehensive studies are needed to confirm this conclusion.

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