Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Dec 6, 2018; 6(15): 961-984
Published online Dec 6, 2018. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v6.i15.961
Probiotic Medilac-S® for the induction of clinical remission in a Chinese population with ulcerative colitis: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Ghania Sohail, Xiaoyu Xu, Mary C Christman, Thomas A Tompkins
Ghania Sohail, Xiaoyu Xu, Thomas A Tompkins, Lallemand Health Solutions Inc., Montreal, QC H4P 2R2, Canada
Mary C Christman, MCC Statistical Consulting, Gainesville, FL 32605, United States
Author contributions: Sohail G and Xu X contributed to acquisition of data, interpretation of data, drafting and revising the article; Christman MC contributed to analysis and interpretation of the data, drafting and revising the article; Tompkins TA contributed to study concept, data evaluation, critical revisions; final manuscript as submitted was reviewed and approved by all authors.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Sohail G, Xu X and Tompkins TA declare that they are paid employees of Lallemand Health Solutions Inc. (Montreal, QC), a company that studies, manufactures and sells probiotics globally, business-to-business, but not to consumers.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: This systematic review with meta-analysis was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 guidelines and checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Thomas A Tompkins, PhD, Research Director, Lallemand Health Solutions Inc., 6100 Avenue Royalmount, Montreal, QC H4P 2R2, Canada. ttompkins@lallemand.com
Telephone: +1-514-2835428
Received: August 28, 2018
Peer-review started: August 28, 2018
First decision: October 5, 2018
Revised: October 16, 2018
Accepted: November 14, 2018
Article in press: November 15, 2018
Published online: December 6, 2018
Processing time: 100 Days and 16.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Growing evidence demonstrates the important role of probiotics in the treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC), however past reviews evaluating the efficacy of probiotics as UC treatment often demonstrate significant heterogeneity, making it difficult to interpret results accurately. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, only one disease state, one probiotic and one population are reviewed and a focused analysis is conducted on the effects of the probiotic Medilac-S® in conjunction with conventional drug therapy to improve symptoms of UC and induce clinical remission within a Chinese population.