Maternal Milk with Probiotics Limits Eczema in Children

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) made a study proving that probiotics help reduce eczema cases in babies. Mothers drinking probiotic milk reduced by up to 40% eczema incidence in their children by age two.

415 pregnant women, chosen randomly, were followed starting at week 36 in their pregnancy and up to three months after giving birth. The selection of the participants was made randomly, among pregnant women from Trondheim, that planned to breastfeed their babies. Two also random groups were made, one of which was given probiotic milk and the other a normal milk, without mothers knowing which group they were part of.

Torbjørn Øien, researcher at NTNU involved in the study, says: “The taste of both products was similar, and the milk was delivered in unmarked milk cartons. This means that neither the participants in the study or the researchers knew who had received probiotic milk or placebo milk. We can therefore say with great certainty that it was the probiotic bacteria alone that caused the difference in the incidence of eczema between the two groups.”

Children were checked for eczema periodically, and also for allergies and asthma at age two. At the end, the results were compared and they showed that “probiotic bacteria reduced the incidence of eczema in children up to age two years by 40 percent. And the kids in ‘probiotics group’ who did have eczema, had less severe cases,” as explains Christian Kvikne Dotterud, student in the Medical Student Research Programme at the Department of Community Medicine at NTNU.

The research did not manage to establish significant results concerning asthma and allergies, but scientists want to continue observation and see if they can find a preventive effect of the probiotics in these cases, when children have reached six years old.

This is the first study in which the mother only takes the probiotics and they are transmitted to the baby by breast milk. Dotterud said that “In Norway, there has been some skepticism about giving infants probiotics. Therefore, it is preferable that mothers take probiotics, not children.”

The study is part of the Prevention of Allergy Among Children in Trondheim, or PACT project, that focuses of childhood allergy.