Rudolf Hyrdel
Probiotics are microorganisms that help prevent health of macroorganisms by improving the function of digestive tract. Their importance was first mentioned a hundred years ago by a Russian physiologist Ilja Mečnikov. We can frequently see diseases resistant to classical chemotherapy and strains of pathogenic microorganisms resistant to ATB and thus we commonly search natural remedies. Disadvantage of scientific consideration of their effectiveness is the fact that probiotics are classified as dietary supplements which lowers the competence of institutes for drug control. The number of blind randomized clinical studies is insufficient to do relevant recommendations for their use. In addition, probiotics are considerably heterogeneous with various types and numbers of bacterial cultures. Despite this there is an increasing number of studies recommending probiotics to treat many diseases. Their positive effect to treatment of antibiotics induced diarrhea and infectious diarrhea of children is the most demonstrable. More and more studies report their positive effect to inflammatory diseases of the intestinal tract, irritable bowel syndrome as well as the treatment and prevention of Helicobacter pylori infection (HP).