Review-Ulcerative colitis and probiotics: An overview

Ulcerative colitis is an inflammatory disease of the large intestine whose effects are bloody diarrhea, cramping and bloating. The disease is usually relapsing and remitting. However, the cause of ulcerative colitis is not yet known. Due to this reason, finding an effective treatment has been a great challenge. The suggested medical treatment is usually composed of two portions; keeping the flare up from happening and treating the flare up when it has happened. Active flare ups are treated with corticosteroids. There are several hypothesis which suggest that ulcerative colitis could be due to the micro flora present in gut. For this reason, several researchers tried to modify the gut microflora with probiotics. However, there is no probiotics found that can induce emission faster than the placebo. The ulcerative colitis patients taking probiotics showed fewer and less severe symptoms during the flare up. This means that even though the probiotics did not end up the flare up faster, it slowed up the severity of the symptoms of the patients.