Traditional Yoghurt and Probiotic in Treatment of Acute Childhood Diarrhoea: A Blinded Randomized Controlled Non - Inferiority Trial

Background: Diarrhoeal diseases rank with acute respiratory infections as among the major causes of morbidity and mortality among children under 5 years of age. Probiotics has been used in the diarrheal episode and have been proved to be useful. The traditional Indian yoghurt which is easily available at all places is being used in Indian villages during episode of diarrhoea. There is only one study comparing the efficacy of yoghurt with probiotics and this study was done tocompare the efficacy and cost effectiveness of traditional yoghurt and probioticin the treatment of acute childhood diarrhoea. Material and Methods: Children aged between three months to five years admitted with some dehydration due to acute diarrhoea were included. Children were randomised in to two groups comprising of 50 cases in each group, intervention group received traditional yoghurt and control received market available probiotic. Results: Data was analysed with the help of SPSS version 16 and the continuous data were compared by Students 't' test. The chi-squared test or Fischer's exact test was used to test the difference between groups and statistical significance was considered as p ≤ 0.05. There was no significant difference between probiotic and traditional yoghurt when time of appearance of first semi formed stool {46.70 ± 14.40 Vs 50.64 ± 13.40 hours}, amount of stool passed per 24 hours {155.74 ± 74.27 Vs 167.53 ± 109.58 grams}, mean numbers of stools {6.29 ± 1.94 Vs 7.22 ± 2.63} and mean weight gain {121.94 ± 94.21 Vs 113.29 ± 73.85 grams} were compared. However, treatment cost with traditional yoghurt was almost half (7.20 Indian Rupees (INR) /patient/day) as compared to Probiotics (15.60INR/patients/ day). Conclusion: Traditional yoghurt was equally efficacious to probiotics and the relative cost of traditional yoghurt was less than probiotic and is easily available at all places especially in the villages and rural areas of tropical countries.