The effectiveness of probiotic as adjuvant therapy of severe pneumonia in children below 5 years-old at Sanglah General Hospital, Bali, Indonesia

Abstract

Background: Pneumonia is a respiratory disease that can cause a lot of morbidity and mortality. Factors that associated with severe pneumonia in children include toddler age, malnutrition, male sex, exclusive breastfeeding, incomplete immunization. This study aims to evaluate the probiotic effectiveness as adjuvant therapy in childhood pneumonia compared to placebo.Methods: This is a randomized, double-blind controlled trial among 54 children with severe pneumonia aged 2 months-5 years who received standard therapy and probiotics compared to standard therapy and placebo from August 2017 to July 2019. Both groups were evaluated for treatment outcomes after receiving 5 days of adjuvant therapy at Sanglah General Hospital, Bali, Indonesia which divided into Group I (n=27) (standard therapy and probiotics) and Group II (n=27) (standard therapy and placebo). Variables assessed in this study include the characteristic of subjects, length of stay, duration of fever, shortness of breath, retractions, rales, C-reactive protein (CRP), probiotics, and history of breastfeeding. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 20 for Windows. Results: Both groups were shown predominantly in male gender (66.67% and 59.26%), exclusive breastfeeding (88.89% and 77.78%), no malnutrition status (81.48% and 77.78%), and having complete immunization history (81.48% and 88.89%) in Group I and II, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference on the length of stay, length of fever, duration of the breath, length of subcostal retraction and decrease in CRP levels on both groups (p>0.05). Meanwhile, there was a statistical difference in rales duration (p=0.037). Multivariate analysis using Ancova found probiotics were able to reduce the duration of rales significantly by 5.87 hours (p=0.022; 95% CI: -10.89 – (-0.86)).Conclusion: This study concluded that adjuvant therapy with probiotics significantly reduced rales duration in children with severe pneumonia.