Similar Occurrence of Febrile Episodes Reported in Non-Atopic Children at Three to Five Years of Age after Prebiotics Supplemented Infant Formula

Abstract

This is a follow up study of a multicenter randomised placebo-controlled trial in seven centres in five West European countries. The RCT assessed the effect of infant formula supplemented with a mixture of prebiotics (with neutral short-chain and long-chain oligosaccharides and pectin-derived acidic oligosaccharides) during infancy in term-born children (n=1130). In the follow-up study 672 children (60% of the study population) participated: 232 (56%) from the prebiotics group (PG), 243 (58%) from the control group (CG), and 197 (66%) from the non-randomised breast-fed group (BG). The primary outcome was the occurrence of febrile episodes at three to five years of age prospectively documented by the parents: in the PG 1.17 (interquartile range 0.50-2.08) episodes per year versus 1.20 (0.52-2.57) in the CG; and 1.48 (0.65-2.60) in the BG. This specific prebiotics mixture given during infancy in healthy non-atopic subjects does not decrease febrile episodes and therefore seems not to prevent infection between their third and fifth birthday.

Infant formulae supplemented with prebiotics: Are they better than unsupplemented formulae? An updated systematic review

“…No differences between groups were found in a studies comparing GOS- (10) (no data shown), GOS/FOS-and AOS-(0•8 g/100 ml) supplemented formulae with unsupplemented formula (P > 0•05) (24) . There were also no differences in either the duration of vomiting (median 2 in the supplemented formula group compared with the unsupplemented formula group (31) .…”

“…Among new studies identified, there were three studies that were not included in the previous Committee systematic review despite having been published before the review (10,16,18) . A number of RCT described the same study population but reported different outcome measures (6,7,11,24,26,30,31,(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42) . The online Supplementary Table S2 summarises the characteristics of the excluded trials, with reasons for exclusion.…”

“…(3) FOS (8,9,12,13,29,32) ; (4) GOS/FOS/AOS (4,24,31,34,35,44) ; (5) oligofructose plus inulin (SYN-1) (23,28) ; and (6) polydextrose (PDX) plus GOS with lactulose (PDX + GOS + LOS) (25,27) or without lactulose (PDX + GOS) (5,(25)(26)(27)41) .…”

Wheezing and infantile colic are associated with neonatal antibiotic treatment

“…Moreover, it is known that a healthy microbiota can protect against pathogens, a phenomenon referred to as colonization resistance . The very low number of bacterial infections in Dutch infants in general may have attributed to the absence of an association …”

“…28 The very low number of bacterial infections in Dutch infants in general may have attributed to the absence of an association. 29 An important strength of this study is the prospective data collection in a relatively large group of healthy, term-born infants.…”