After summer holidays, it is time to go back to school for students… and to deal with stress due to the fear of exams, of the future or the workload… Stress origins are multiple. Stress involves intestinal hyperpermeability which means that intestinal microbiota does not play its barrier function, with a decrease of immunity. The organisms are also more impacted by different respiratory pathologies as cold or flu, that lead to more school absenteeism.

Following these observations, the Langkamp-Henken’s team investigated the effect of different probiotics intake on prevalence of cold and flu on students under pressure during academic exams. 581 volunteers participated in this clinical trial and they were randomly divided in 4 groups : the first one received daily Lactobacillus helveticus, the second one Bifidobacterium longum infantis, the third one Bifidobacterium bifidum, and the last one a placebo. All the probiotic strains were given up to 3 billions CFU per day.

After 6 weeks of consumption, results highlighted that the B. bifidum group had less cold and flu symptoms than the other groups. Moreover, the percentage of students who noticed more than one day of cold or flu symptoms is significantly lower for the B. bifidum group.

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Reference

LANGKAMP-HENKEN B., ROWE CC., FORD AL, CHRISTMAN MC., NIEVES C., KHOURI L., SPECHT GJ., GIRARD SA., SPAISER SJ., DAHL WJ. Bifidobacterium bifidum R0071 results in a greater proportion of healthy days and a lower percentage of academically stressed students reporting a day of cold/flu: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Br J Nutr. 2015 ;113, 426-34