Effect of probiotic supplementation on burn treatment: a systematic review

Background: Due to importance of burning challenges, perhaps probiotics affection considered for further treatment. While animal studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of probiotic supplementation on burn treatment, the significance of these effects in humans are unknown. The aim of the current study was to systematically evaluate current literature on the impact of probiotic supplementation on burn in human.Methods: PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Science Direct and Web of Science were searched for randomized controlled trials published between January 1996 and 25 December 2018. Primary outcomes were the incidence of infection, wound healing and need for taking graft. The secondary outcomes were diarrhea, length of hospital stay and death. Seven studies were found on human; three were excluded since two had cross-sectional designs and the other one was a quasi-experimental trial.Results: Four randomized clinical trial (N = 180 participants) were included. The individual study results were conflicting, while three studies indicated non-significant results for improvement in wound healing, need for taking graft, hospital stay and diarrhea among patients receiving probiotics compared to placebo, results of one study were significant for these outcomes. This inconsistency may be related to studies designs. In the studies with non-significant results, additional interventions were used in both groups or in the placebo group, while in the study with significant result the intervention and the control groups were identical except for the intervention.Conclusion: Probiotics were not found to be more effective than placebo for burn treatment. Further well designed clinical trials are needed to enable conclusions to be drawn on the effectiveness of probiotic administration for burn treatment.