Probiotics are viable microorganisms with the capacity to alter the gastrointestinal microbiota of the host. The recent scientific advancements and development of probiotic formulations have rekindled the importance of these clinical interpretations, underlining the starring role of the gut flora in host metabolism, defense and immune regulation. Despite encouraging preliminary results from randomized clinical trials of probiotics for various clinical conditions including irritable bowel syndrome, necrotizing enterocolitis, gastroenteritis, antibiotic-associated diarrhea, infantile colic, and improvement of digestion and immune function, further evidence is needed to determine the reproducibility of the findings and elucidate the underlying mechanisms. In this review, we have considered the postnatal development of gut flora and appraised the role of probiotics in health and disease condition among infants.
Keywords: Bifidobacteria; clinical trials; metagenome; microbiota; necrotizing enterocolitis.