Consumer Reports and Cochrane: Probiotics Help

Probiotic pills ease irritable bowel syndrome and other stomach problems more effectively than yogurt with probiotics, a recent survey of Consumer Reports subscribers suggests. In the Consumer Reports survey, 1,019 people said they took probiotic supplements to ease their stomach problems and 1,121 people said they consumed yogurt probiotics. A third of the supplement users said the probiotic helped a lot, compared with 17 percent and 20 percent of those who consumed the yogurt for their IBS or another digestive disorder, respectively.

An study on probiotics and colds, published this month by the Cochrane Collaboration, looked at 10 previous studies including 3,451 children and adults age 40 and younger who took pills or consumed yogurt for more than a week. It concluded that people who took a probiotic experienced 12 percent fewer acute upper respiratory tract infections over the study periods than those who took a placebo. In addition, people who took probiotics were less likely to need antibiotics to treat bacterial complications of those infections.