Probiotic-enriched foods and dietary supplement containing SYNBIO positively affects bowel habits in healthy adults: an assessment using standard statistical analysis and Support Vector Machines.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Probiotics, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Primary and secondary outcomes gave the overall assessment of bowel well-being, while a Psychological General Well-Being Index compiled by participants estimated the health-related quality of life as well as the gastrointestinal tolerance determined with the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale.

Support Vector Machine models for classification problems were used to validate the total outcomes on bowel well-being.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 100 subjects were involved.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and parallel-group study.

Because people in this Probiotics study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Probiotics study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Probiotics could be set against what happens without it.

The Probiotics group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

What Was Measured

Primary and secondary outcomes gave the overall assessment of bowel well-being, while a Psychological General Well-Being Index compiled by participants estimated the health-related quality of life as well as the gastrointestinal tolerance determined with the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale.

Support Vector Machine models for classification problems were used to validate the total outcomes on bowel well-being.

The subject headings attached to it are Bacteria, Constipation, Defecation, Feces, Food Microbiology, Food, Fortified and Habits.

The authors tagged it with the keywords L. paracasei IMC 502, L. rhamnosus IMC 501, Support Vector Machines, probiotic dietary supplement and probiotic functional foods.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Probiotics in 100 subjects.

The publication is from 2014 (International journal of food sciences and nutrition), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.