The literature considers children both a risk group for administering probiotic strains and one of the populations that can most benefit from it. Due to the health benefits associated to probiotic supplementation, this scope review sought to formulate a critical evaluation of how Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG, carried in food and non-food matrices, and experimental design may affect the health promotion of infants and children. In this study, a literature search was conducted in three scientific databases: PubMed, Web of Science, and SciELO to retrieve research, published in English or Spanish, which administered L. rhamnosus GG to infants and children with any disease or in eutrophic condition. Three reviewers with an expert supervision screened 540 articles, published between 2001 and 2022, which were retrieved from the databases. The data extracted was compiled and shown in this scoping review. In total, was included, after criteria observation, 44 articles in this review. Intestinal disorders were the most frequent outcome in these studies (36.4%) and capsules, the most common vehicle for administering the probiotic strain (40.9%). Probiotic strain dose ranged from 105 to 1012 cfu/dose of L. rhamnosus GG and intervention length extended from one to more than 6 months. Food matrix showed health effects in 57.1% of the clinical trials and non-food matrix 46.7%, which indicates that the health-promoting effect of the probiotic GG strain may be equivalent between the two forms of delivery. However, the highly heterogeneous experimental designs prevent further analysis and a systematic review and meta-analysis is recommended to address just the outcomes of studies and achieve data homogeneity in order to determine which vehicle is the most suitable for health promoting.
Keywords: Clinical trials; Daily dose; Infants; Probiotics; Statistical power.
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