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What do you counsel the families of pediatric cancer patients who want to take probiotics while receiving chemotherapy?

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Do you permit use of probiotics/prebiotics for pediatric cancer patients receiving chemotherapy?

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1 Answer
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Pediatric Hematology/Oncology · Phoenix Children's Medical Group
Answered on

I allow all pediatric oncology patients to take pre and probiotics if they desire although our bone marrow transplant colleagues are more hesitant. There is no good evidence (yet) that probiotics improve the gut microbiome or have any other significant effects on complications of childhood cancer, but they do appear to be safe in most cases, and we do know that the gut microbiome is significantly altered with chemotherapy administration (Oldenburg et al., PMID 34638430; Bai et al., PMID 29168036...

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