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Effects of Lactobacillus casei Shirota ingestion on common cold infection and herpes virus antibodies in endurance athletes: a placebo-controlled, randomized trial

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posted on 2016-06-16, 15:49 authored by Michael Gleeson, Nicolette BishopNicolette Bishop, Lauren Struszczak
Aims To assess evidence of health and immune benefit by consumption of a Lactobacillus casei Shirota probiotic in highly physically active people. Methods Single-centre, population-based, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Daily ingestion of probiotic (PRO) or placebo (PLA) for 20 weeks for n = 243 (126 PRO, 117 PLA) university athletes and games players. Subjects completed validated questionnaires on upper respiratory tract infection symptoms (URS) on a daily basis and on physical activity status at weekly intervals during the intervention period. Blood samples were collected before and after 20 weeks of the intervention for determination of Epstein Barr virus (EBV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV) serostatus and antibody levels. Results URS episode incidence was unexpectedly low (mean 0.6 per individual) and was not significantly different on PRO compared with PLA. URS episode duration and severity were also not influenced by PRO. A significant time × group interaction effect was observed for plasma CMV antibody titres in CMV seropositive participants (p < 0.01) with antibody titre falling in the PRO group but remaining unchanged in the PLA group over time. A similar effect was found for plasma EBV antibody titres in EBV seropositive participants (p < 0.01) with antibody titre falling in the PRO group but increasing in the PLA group over time. Conclusions In summary, regular ingestion of PRO did not reduce URS episode incidence which might be attributable to the low URS incidence in this study. Regular ingestion of PRO reduced plasma CMV and EBV antibody titres, an effect that can be interpreted as a benefit to overall immune status.

Funding

This study was fully sponsored by Yakult Honsha Co., Ltd., Japan.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

European Journal of Applied Physiology

Citation

GLEESON, M., BISHOP, N. and STRUSZCZAK, L., 2016. Effects of Lactobacillus casei Shirota ingestion on common cold infection and herpes virus antibodies in endurance athletes: a placebo-controlled, randomized trial. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 116 (8), pp. 1555-1563.

Publisher

Springer Verlag / © The Authors

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-06-07

Publication date

2016

Notes

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

ISSN

1439-6327

Language

  • en

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