About this Research Topic
Recently, numerous market-oriented probiotics have been claimed to offer therapeutic or improvement effects on gastrointestinal, respiratory, allergic, and metabolic diseases in children, and even directly on their growth and development. However, on the one hand, there is a lack of robust evidence-based research for probiotic interventions to improve children's health; on the other hand, the strict definition of probiotics requires that the above evidence-based clinical studies must be based on strain-specific probiotics. Some international professional institutions have recommended that only probiotic strains with proven clinical efficacy, administered in appropriate dosage, may be used as an adjuvant to treat children with gastrointestinal disorders and allergic disease, or to improve their overall health. There are currently thousands of probiotic products on the market. Although the strains of the vast majority of these products belong to bifidobacteria or lactobacilli, there are significant differences in strain composition, colony-forming units (CFUs), excipient composition, dosage form, and biological activity among those products. However, at present, there is a lack of relative research on how the supplementation of specific probiotic strains with exact colony-forming units (CFUs), intervention duration and specific disease, affect developing children's health by influencing the composition, immune and metabolic regulation functions of the intestinal flora. Although randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered to be the gold standard of clinical study design, which can establish causal associations in probiotic supplementation and health results, clinical studies, including RCTs and real-world studies, conducted in developing children are quite lacking.
The purpose of this Research Topic is to facilitate primary research or further processing of existing primary data to fill the gap in clinical studies on how specific probiotic supplementation changes the composition and functional activity of gut microbiota in specific diseases in children, such as gastrointestinal, respiratory, or allergic disease. These studies should include the specific strains used, the dosage used, the duration of intervention, and the specific diseases targeted, so that consumers and healthcare workers have evidence-based recommendations of probiotics. All the studies will help us screen for effective strains that can indeed improve children's health, based on clinical studies of strain specificity of commercially available probiotic products.
In this research topic, we welcome clinical trials (especially randomized controlled trials or real-world studies), case reports, narratives and systematic reviews (especially meta-analyses) targeting developing children that include, but are not limited to the following sub-topics:
•The efficacy and/or effectiveness of strain-specific probiotic supplement products available on the market for specific diseases in children, such as gastrointestinal, respiratory and allergic diseases, through regulation of the composition and function of gut microbiota by clinical trial and case report;
•The comprehensive comparative analysis of different specific strains of probiotics available on the market on the same developmental disease in children (such as gastrointestinal, respiratory and allergic diseases), or the same specific probiotic strain on different developmental diseases depending on the supplementation methods, doses, and duration by narrative and/or systematic review;
•Review of the possible mechanisms by which specific bacterial strains can effectively assist in the treatment of specific diseases in childhood.
The purpose of this Research Topic is to facilitate primary research or further processing of existing primary data to fill the gap in clinical studies on how specific probiotic supplementation changes the composition and functional activity of gut microbiota in specific diseases in children, such as gastrointestinal, respiratory, or allergic disease. These studies should include the specific strains used, the dosage used, the duration of intervention, and the specific diseases targeted, so that consumers and healthcare workers have evidence-based recommendations of probiotics. All the studies will help us screen for effective strains that can indeed improve children's health, based on clinical studies of strain specificity of commercially available probiotic products.
In this research topic, we welcome clinical trials (especially randomized controlled trials or real-world studies), case reports, narratives and systematic reviews (especially meta-analyses) targeting developing children that include, but are not limited to the following sub-topics:
•The efficacy and/or effectiveness of strain-specific probiotic supplement products available on the market for specific diseases in children, such as gastrointestinal, respiratory and allergic diseases, through regulation of the composition and function of gut microbiota by clinical trial and case report;
•The comprehensive comparative analysis of different specific strains of probiotics available on the market on the same developmental disease in children (such as gastrointestinal, respiratory and allergic diseases), or the same specific probiotic strain on different developmental diseases depending on the supplementation methods, doses, and duration by narrative and/or systematic review;
•Review of the possible mechanisms by which specific bacterial strains can effectively assist in the treatment of specific diseases in childhood.
Keywords: children, specific disease, microecology, clinical trial, probiotic strains
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
