LONGECITY

Dig Liver Dis. 2002 Sep;34 Suppl 2:S68-71.  Related Articles, Links

    Probiotics and atopic dermatitis. A new strategy in atopic dermatitis.

    Miraglia del Giudice M Jr, De Luca MG, Capristo C.

    Department of Paediatrics, Second University, Naples, Italy. mmdelgiudice@cybernet.it

    Over the last few decades, the prevalence of atopic dermatitis has been increasing from 2% to 100%, with 90% of cases within 5 years of age versus 6% between 6 and 10 years and 2% after 10 years, and environmental factors may possibly play an important role in this increase as in other atopic diseases. Many findings suggest an important role of atopy in atopic dermatitis; moreover, 40% of children with atopic dermatitis have food allergy and the removal of the food allergen from the patient's diet leads to a significant clinical improvement. In a possible scenario, IgE-bearing dendritic cells are likely to process allergens acquired in the gastrointestinal tract, circulate to the skin and activate local T cells. Cultures of beneficial live microorganisms characteristic of the commensal microflora are administered with probiotic functional foods in order to provide a microbial challenge for the maturation of gut-associated lymphoid tissue, which the infant often lacks. The probiotic effects are attributed to normalisation of the increased intestinal permeability and balancing gut microecology, improvement of the immunological defence barrier (IgA) of the intestine, alleviation of the intestinal inflammatory response, and downregulation of proinflammatory cytokines characteristic of local and systemic allergic inflammation.

    PMID: 12408445 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Edited by FunkOdyssey, 28 April 2006 - 03:47 PM.

Thorne Research has produced an excellent review of the causes of intestinal dysbiosis. It contains alot of information I've never seen anywhere else, including the specific effects of each commonly used antibiotic on gut flora. Check it out:

I'm nervous to "say this out loud" because I don't want to jinx anything. However, I've also wanted to share with you all something that has me excited. I've had seasonal allergies (in addition to food & drug allergies which I recently developed) my entire life. Spring brings tree pollen and fall brings rag weed. Fall was always more severe for symptoms. However, spring was also a shorter time period so maybe it seemed less severe.

Anyway, I started on Custom Probiotics this winter and would you believe that I didn't have any spring allergies this year. Tree pollen coated our porch so I know that the pollen was there this year. I also haven't added anything to my supplement regimen except the probiotics.

I originally started taking them hoping I could do something to mitigate all of the new allergies I seemed to be developing the last couple of years to foods I've always eaten and some drugs (NSAIDS, sulfa). I don't know how I made the linkage that hinted to me that probiotics might be useful because I'm not detail oriented enough to save that type of thing.

Please fire back if I'm getting overly excited about nothing.

Chris

You aren't getting overly excited about probiotics -- that is well within the realm of their power.

Here's an alarming fact from the Thorne review above: a single course of antibiotics can screw up your GIT microflora for up to 16 months!

People with intestinal permeability may also want to avoid hot peppers and other common spices:
Pubmed

I remember there being extensive discussion over this at CR Society, although I do not personally know what is was about. Their search function was down, but when its up again I am sure words "probiotics" or "intestinal dysbiosis" would find it, despite them having the worst search function in the history of internet.