Review of probiotics in children

Probiotics are commonly used in pediatric office practice. Benefits of one probiotic cannot be generalized to another. Use of combination of probiotics is not evidence based in all clinical situations. Probiotics should be considered as drugs with pharmacokinetic, pharmaco-dynamic even pharmaco-genomic properties. Use of probiotics in chronic illness, immune-suppressed patients, critical patients in PICU/NICU needs further validation before wide spread use. Unbiased population based studies with uniform protocol are needed due to active dynamic interactions between humans and microbial species.