Health and Fitness News and Notes

Probiotics, the beneficial bacteria that live in our digestive tracts, are widely used to treat gastroenteritis or “stomach flu,” an inflammation of the stomach and intestines usually caused by a virus or bacterium. But a randomized clinical trial has found that the treatment is ineffective.

Researchers studied 971 children 3 months to 4 years old who arrived in emergency rooms with the typical symptoms of gastroenteritis — nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhea and dehydration, stomach pain and cramps. They were randomly assigned to a five-day course of Lactobacillus rhamnosus, a commonly studied probiotic, or a placebo.

The researchers tracked the duration and severity of symptoms for two weeks. Episodes of vomiting and diarrhea declined day by day at the same rate in both groups until almost all had recovered.

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, along with a study showing similar results with a different probiotic combination in a clinical trial in Canada.

“We looked at duration and severity of symptoms, young versus old, kids on antibiotics or not, kids that had a virus or a bacterium or no measurable cause,” said the lead author, Dr. David Schnadower, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. “Every time, the result was the same: no effect.”

Many YouTube videos about prostate cancer are unreliable sources of information.

Researchers searched YouTube for “prostate cancer screening” and “prostate cancer treatment.” Then they scored the first 75 hits for each phrase, using validated scales to assess such measures as whether the video favored new technology, recommended unproven treatments, accurately described risks and benefits or showed commercial bias.

Outdated, biased or inaccurate videos were viewed more than 6.3 million times. About 77 percent contained misinformation, 19 percent recommended unproven alternative medical treatments, and 27 percent had some commercial bias favoring treatments that were expensive and untested. Three-quarters of the videos described the benefits of various treatments, but almost half failed to mention any risks or side effects.

The study, in European Urology, also found that the greater the number of views, “likes” and “thumbs up” ratings a video received, the poorer the quality of the information provided tended to be.

The lead author, Dr. Stacy Loeb, an assistant professor of urology at New York University, said that one video, viewed by more than 300,000 people, promoted Chinese herbal injections into the prostate, a treatment with no scientific validity.

“Don’t believe everything you see online,” she said. “Just because a lot of people like it or view it, doesn’t mean it’s accurate.”

African-Americans are less likely than white people to get the newest stroke-preventing medicines for atrial fibrillation, a new study found.

Atrial fibrillation, often called A-fib, is the quivering or irregular heartbeat that increases the risk for stroke and other heart problems. The standard treatment is oral anticoagulants, or blood thinners, to prevent blood clots.

The study, in JAMA Cardiology, included 11,100 whites, 646 blacks and 671 Hispanic patients diagnosed with A-fib. After adjusting for the clinical features and severity of the condition, the study’s authors found that blacks were 25 percent less likely than whites to receive any oral anticoagulant and 37 percent less likely to receive the newer, and in many cases more effective, direct-acting oral anticoagulants. There was no difference between whites and Hispanics.

When they further adjusted for socioeconomic factors, blacks were still 27 percent less likely to receive the newer anticoagulants.

The lead author, Dr. Utibe R. Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, said that questions of adherence and expense may enter a provider’s mind in choosing a medicine, but unconscious bias is also an issue.

“We may have certain assumptions about patients that are irrelevant to health care,” he said, “and then fail to offer them the full breadth of medical treatment.”