Maternal perspectives on the use of probiotics in infants: a cross-sectional survey

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Catherine J Field¹  Bonnie J Kaplan²  David W Johnston²  Sarah L Bridgman³  Meghan B Azad³  Anita L Kozyrskyj³  Nicole Letourneau⁴ 

[1] Department of Agriculture, Food & Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada;Department of Pediatrics, Alberta Children’s Hospital, Calgary, Canada;Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada;Faculties of Nursing & Medicine (Pediatrics), Calgary, Canada;

关键词: Probiotics;    Infant;    Mother;    Nutrition;    Natural health products;    Cross-sectional survey;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-14-366

 received in 2014-07-16, accepted in 2014-08-27,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundProbiotic products that may modify the intestinal microbiota are becoming increasingly available and known to consumers due to their potential to prevent or treat many pediatric health conditions. As scientific knowledge of the health benefits of probiotics increases, it is important to identify factors that may prevent their successful integration into patient care as well as to ensure effective translation of research findings. The aim of this study was to describe maternal perspectives on probiotics and their use in infants.MethodsMothers with a child aged two years or younger enrolled in the Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition (APrON) study were invited by email to complete a 29 item self-administered web-based questionnaire.ResultsA total of 413 mothers of the 1327 contacted completed the questionnaire. The majority (99.3%) of respondents had heard of probiotics and were aware that they contained live bacteria (87.0%); 89.3% had used a product containing probiotics themselves but only 50.8% had given one to their infant. Most mothers indicated they believed that probiotics were beneficial (73.1%) and none thought they were harmful. Over a third of mothers did not feel informed enough to make a decision on whether probiotics were safe to use in infants (36.6%).ConclusionsThe study demonstrates that awareness and understanding of probiotics is high among mothers in Alberta, Canada. However, there is still uncertainty regarding the benefit of probiotics as well as safety in infants which could be important factors determining therapeutic use in the future. Further studies that demonstrate beneficial effects and safety of probiotics in healthy infants as well as targeted knowledge translation should help to address these potential concerns.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Bridgman et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.