The effect of daily probiotics on the incidence and severity of necrotizing enterocolitis in infants with very low birth weight
Bibliographic record
Abstract
<h3>Background:</h3> Necrotizing enterocolitis remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in premature infants. The role of prophylactic probiotics in its prevention is unclear. This study evaluates the effect of routine probiotics on the incidence and severity of necrotizing enterocolitis in infants with very low birth weight in the neonatal intensive care unit. <h3>Methods:</h3> This retrospective cohort study compared infants cared for at a single institution before and after implementation of routine probiotic administration (2014– 2018). Babies born after July 2016 received probiotics containing <i>Bifidobacterium</i> and <i>Lactobacillus</i> daily until 35 weeks corrected gestational age. Baseline characteristics, necrotizing enterocolitis incidence and severity, infections, mortality, and length of stay were compared between groups. <h3>Results:</h3> Of the 665 infants included in the study, 310 received probiotics and 355 did not. The 2 groups did not differ with regard to gestational age, birth anthropometrics, mode of delivery, comorbidities, and type of enteral feed. The incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis (Bell’s stage 2 of 3) was similar between groups (4% v. 5%, <i>p</i> = 0.35), as was its severity (<i>p</i> = 0.10). In addition, there were no significant differences in mortality and length of stay between the groups. Significantly fewer infants receiving probiotics developed infections (27% v. 34%, <i>p</i> = 0.046), with the rate of urinary tract infections having the largest reduction. <h3>Conclusion:</h3> The routine use of <i>Bifidobacterium</i> and <i>Lactobacillus</i> probiotics in infants with very low birth weight did not significantly affect the incidence and severity of necrotizing enterocolitis. However, the use of probiotics was associated with fewer overall infections.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".