Randomized Clinical Trial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2015; 21(19): 5985-5994
Published online May 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i19.5985
Effectiveness of probiotic therapy for the prevention of relapse in patients with inactive ulcerative colitis
Yasushi Yoshimatsu, Akihiro Yamada, Ryuichi Furukawa, Koji Sono, Aisaku Osamura, Kentaro Nakamura, Hiroshi Aoki, Yukiko Tsuda, Nobuo Hosoe, Nobuo Takada, Yasuo Suzuki
Yasushi Yoshimatsu, Akihiro Yamada, Ryuichi Furukawa, Koji Sono, Aisaku Osamura, Kentaro Nakamura, Hiroshi Aoki, Yukiko Tsuda, Nobuo Hosoe, Nobuo Takada, Yasuo Suzuki, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Toho University, Toho University Sakura Medical Center, Chiba 285-8741, Japan
Author contributions: Yoshimatsu Y and Suzuki Y contributed equally to this work; Yoshimatsu Y and Suzuki Y designed research; Yoshimatsu Y, Yamada A, Furukawa R, Sono K, Osamura A, Nakamura K, Aoki H, Tsuda Y, Hosoe N and Takada N performed research; Yoshimatsu Y and Suzuki Y contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Yoshimatsu Y and Suzuki Y analyzed data; and Yoshimatsu Y and Suzuki Y wrote the paper.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the ethical committee of Toho University Sakura Medical Center.
Informed consent: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: Yasushi Yoshimatsu has no conflict of interest.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Yasushi Yoshimatsu, Assistant Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Toho University, Toho University Sakura Medical Center, 564-1, Shimoshizu, Sakura, Chiba 285-8741, Japan. 600184yy@sakura.med.toho-u.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-43-4628811 Fax: +81-43-4874246
Received: October 27, 2014
Peer-review started: October 28, 2014
First decision: November 14, 2014
Revised: December 15, 2014
Accepted: February 11, 2015
Article in press: February 11, 2015
Published online: May 21, 2015
Processing time: 413 Days and 6.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: We conducted a single-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to examine whether 12 mo of probiotic therapy was useful for preventing relapse of ulcerative colitis (UC) in patients who were already in remission. The relapse rates in the probiotic therapy group and placebo group were respectively 0.0% vs 17.4% at 3 mo (P = 0.036), 8.7% vs 26.1% at 6 mo (P = 0.119), and 21.7% vs 34.8% (P = 0.326) at 9 mo. At 12 mo, the remission rate was 69.5% in the probiotic therapy group and 56.6% in the placebo group (P = 0.248). Therefor probiotics may be effective for maintaining clinical remission in patients with quiescent UC.