Probiotic supplementation in children with autism spectrum disorder

Scenario A mother of a 4 year old with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) attends the paediatric outpatient clinic. Her son has significant behavioural difficulties, tantrums that are difficult to control, an obsession with spinning wheels and sensory difficulties. She has heard and read about the advantages of probiotic supplementation (PS) in ASD. She wants to know if her son should be given probiotics to improve his behaviour. You wonder if there is any evidence that regular PS improve behaviour in children with ASD. Structured clinical question: In children with proven ASD (patient), does supplementation with any probiotic microorganism/s (intervention) compared with placebo/none (comparator) improve behaviour (outcome) in the short term? Search strategy and outcome—secondary sources: The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, the Cochrane library, Issue 2, 2012) was searched in August 2014 and March 2015 using the words ‘probiotic’ and ‘autism’ with no limits. None of...
Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: ADC Archimedes, Clinical genetics, Stroke, Childhood nutrition, Child and adolescent psychiatry (paedatrics), Childhood nutrition (paediatrics), Child health, Autism, Asperger syndrome, Pervasive developmental disorder, Personality disorders Source Type: research