We congratulate Dr. Pinaki Panigrahi, MD., Ph. D, Washington, DC for his pioneering work on
An alumnus of BJB College, Bhubaneswar and MKCG Medical College, Berhampur,Odisha, India Dr. Panigrahi is currently working as a pediatrician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health. The abstract of the publication in the Journal, Nature follows:
“Sepsis in early infancy results in one million annual deaths worldwide, most of them in developing countries. No efficient means of prevention is currently available. Here we report on a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of an oral synbiotic preparation (Lactobacillus plantarum plus fructooligosaccharide) in rural Indian newborns. We enrolled 4,556 infants that were at least 2,000?g at birth, at least 35 weeks of gestation, and with no signs of sepsis or other morbidity, and monitored them for 60 days. We show a significant reduction in the primary outcome (combination of sepsis and death) in the treatment arm (risk ratio 0.60, 95% confidence interval 0.48–0.74), with few deaths (4 placebo, 6 synbiotic). Significant reductions were also observed for culture-positive and culture-negative sepsis and lower respiratory tract infections. These findings suggest that a large proportion of neonatal sepsis in developing countries could be effectively prevented using a synbiotic containing L. plantarum ATCC-202195.”
Details of the application of this probiotic took place in India. (Odisha TV).
This work is significant according to Dr. Panigrahi. The treatment worked so well that the safety board for trial stopped the study early. “We were planning to enroll 8,000 babies, but stopped at just over 4,000 infants,” Panigrahi further stated to National Public Radio (NPR).According to Dr. Panigrahi this probiotic use per day could be within $1.00.
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