Effect of L. acidophilus and B. lactis on blood glucose in women with gestational diabetes mellitus: a randomized placebo-controlled trial

Abstract

Background Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a complication of pregnancy that can be associated with neonatal complications and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Recently, probiotic use has been proposed for better control of glucose in GDM patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of probiotic yoghurt compare with ordinary yoghurt on GDM women. Methods In this double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial, 84 pregnant women with GDM were randomly assigned into two groups of 42 recipients who underwent 300 g/day of probiotic yoghurt or placebo for 8 weeks. Blood glucose, HbA1c, and the outcome of pregnancy were compared between the two groups after the intervention. Results According to the findings of present trial no significant differences were observed in general characteristics between the two groups (p > 0.05). Both fasting and post prandial blood glucose as well as the level of HbA1c were decreased significantly in probiotic group (p < 0.05), although these changes are not statistically significant in the placebo group. The between group differences was significant after the 2 month intervention (p < 0.05). Neonates born of probiotic group mothers, have significantly lower weight and fewer macrosome neonates were born in this group compared with control group (p < 0.05). However, no difference was observed in other values of outcome. Conclusions Our study revealed that better control of blood glucose can be achieved by consumption of probiotic yoghurt in patients whose pregnancy is complicated by GDM, compared with placebo. Also incidence of macrosomia may be decreased by this regimen.

Reporting of Perinatal Outcomes in Probiotic Randomized Controlled Trials. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The included papers dated from 2001 to 2020. Of the studies, 15 were conducted in Iran [30,31,[33][34][35][36]40,[46][47][48]50,51,64,70,72]; 4 trials were conducted in Finland [49,55,56,69]; 3 in New Zealand [66,73,74]; 3 in Australia [37,38,67]; 2 each in Canada [71,75], Germany [43,54], Taiwan [45,68], and Ireland [58,59], and the remaining 13 RCTs were conducted in other different countries. Most of the studies recruited healthy pregnant women.…”

“…Regarding the main objectives of the studies, the most common were improving insulin/glucose metabolism (13 studies) [30,33,34,40,44,46,50,52,58,64,69,70,72]; preventing eczema, allergic disease, or atopic sensitization (10 studies) [29,37,41,49,[53][54][55]65,68,73]; improving oxidative stress status and inflammatory profile (8 studies) [14,36,[46][47][48]51,64]; modifying the mother's or infant's microbiota (5 studies) [14,61,63,65,75]; and preventing GBS occurrence (4 studies) [45,67,71,74]. Other outcomes included bacterial vaginosis, mastitis, pregnancy outcomes, safety assessment, maternal anthropometric measures, infant colic, genetic profile, and infant diarrhea or gut integrity.…”

“…Probiotic/synbiotic administration was only compared to placebo in 37 trials (80%) [29][30][31][32][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]58,59,[63][64][65][66]68,[70][71][72][73][74][75], while 5 studies (11%) used a group with no treatment or routine care as a comparison [14,[33][34][35]67], and the remaining 4 papers (9%) analyzed other additional comparison groups (i.e., probiotic + vitamin D) [48,56,60,69]. Microorganisms were administered orally in all of the included studies.…”

“…Microorganisms were administered orally in all of the included studies. Administration vehicles consisted of capsules in most of the cases (35 studies, 76%), with 3 studies using probiotic yoghurt (6.5%) [33,34,70]; 3 studies using probiotic powder [53,60,61]; and 1 study each using probiotic oil (2.2%) [29], tablets [14], and milk [41]. The two remaining studies (4.3%) did not specify the vehicle used to administer the microorganisms [67,72].…”

Epigenetics, Maternal Diet and Metabolic Programming

“…In another study, probiotic supplementation significantly reduced gestational weight gain and fasting blood glucose and improved insulin sensitivity [98]. In pregnant women, the consumption of probiotic yoghurt has shown beneficial effects for the mother and child [99,100].…”