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Probiotic Therapy for Treating Behavioral and Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Clinical Trials

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Summary

The therapeutic potentials of probiotics in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remains controversial, with the only existing systematic review on this topic published in 2015. Results from new trials have become available in recent years. We therefore conducted an updated systematic review, to assess the efficacy of probiotics in relieving behavioral symptoms of ASD and gastrointestinal comorbidities. Our review includes two randomized controlled trials, which showed improvement of ASD behaviors, and three open trials, all which exhibited a trend of improvement. Four of these trials concluded from subjective measures that gastrointestinal function indices showed a trend of improvement with probiotic therapy. Additional rigorous trials are needed to evaluate the effects of probiotic supplements in ASD.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Clara Hobbie for manuscript editing.

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Author notes

  1. The authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02115, USA

    Jun Liu & George Agyapong

  2. Women and Children’s Hospital, Shenzhen, 518052, China

    Guo-bing Wan & Ming-shi Huang

  3. New York University, Buffalo, 14214, USA

    Tian-le Zou

  4. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, 10029, USA

    Xue-ying Zhang

  5. National Yang Ming University, Taipei, 112, China

    Yen-Wenn Liu & Ying-Chieh Tsai

  6. Indiana University, Indianapolis, 46202, USA

    Yi-qing Song

  7. Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, 02129, USA

    Xue-jun Kong

Authors
  1. Jun Liu
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  2. Guo-bing Wan
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  3. Ming-shi Huang
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  4. George Agyapong
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  7. Yen-Wenn Liu
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Correspondence to Xue-jun Kong.

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Authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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Liu, J., Wan, Gb., Huang, Ms. et al. Probiotic Therapy for Treating Behavioral and Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Clinical Trials. CURR MED SCI 39, 173–184 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11596-019-2016-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11596-019-2016-4

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