Six-year-old Luke Turmelle is in constant motion. That's why his parents knew something was wrong when all he could do was sleep after a bad stomach bug caused excessive diarrhea.
"When he got to the emergency room, he was very dehydrated. That's why he was so weak," said Yumi Turmelle, Luke's mother.
Severe gastroenteritis is responsible for one million pediatric medical visits every year. By the age of five, one in 278 kids will be hospitalized, and one in 14 will visit the emergency room.
Experts said there's no safe medicine that will help.
"Anti-diarrheal that are used for adults are dangerous in kids; we cannot prescribe them. So when a patient comes to the emergency room with diarrhea, we can't offer them anything," said Dr. David Schnadower, pediatrician at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
But now, Schnadower and his colleagues are testing probiotics as an option.
"There are a lot of studies that show that probiotics are safe. We're not sure if they're effective or not," Schnadower explained.
Schnadower is leading a trial of 900 kids ages three months to four years who seek emergency treatment for the stomach bug. Kids will receive either a probiotic or a placebo for five days. Researchers will check at five days and two weeks to see if the probiotic lessened the length and severity of diarrhea.
Yumi Turmelle is not only a mom, but a pediatrician, so she knows kids can go downhill fast if they can't hold fluids.
"If they could have avoided that extra day of dehydration that wound him up in the emergency room, it would have helped," she said.
And her son would have been feeling better, faster.
Schnadower and his colleagues are testing one of the most commonly used probiotics; lactobacillus-G-G or L-G-G, which is sold over the counter as Culturelle.
While L-G-G appears to be safe, Schnadower said it is too soon to recommend it for treatment of symptoms. He said this study will be the longest study ever that may offer an additional treatment option for emergency room physicians and parents.
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