Acute gastroenteritis (AGE) is a common clinical syndrome in children before the age of 2 years. Oral rehydration solution (ORS) treatment is normally considered the first-line treatment of AGE for children with diarrhoea and now we may have a new option to treat these patients with both probiotics and zinc as suggested by a recent comparative study. The study was conducted in 132 Turkish patients aged between 6 months and 6 years, who had acute diarrhoea within 2 weeks. The patients were divided into four groups upon improvement was seen in oral intake and hydration status – dietary counselling, probiotics, zinc, or combined treatment of probiotics and zinc. The last group demonstrated significant improvement in terms of disease outcome, as the mean time to diarrhoea termination was 29.55 to 41 hours less than the other groups. On top of that, this combination also reduced the severity of acute paediatric diarrhoea. Given the use of probiotics in gastroenteritis treatment is increasing, more prospective comparative studies with a combination of zinc and probiotic organisms will be needed to better define treatment duration and dose for childhood AGE.

Reference: 

Yalcin G, et al. J Pak Med Assoc. 2022 Oct;72(10):2019-2024. 

Yazar AS, GüvenŞ, Dinleyici EÇ. Turk J Gastroenterol. 2016; 27:537-40.