Abstract
BACKGROUND. Bacteriocins are peptides with antimicrobial efficacy produced by certain bacterial species. Probiotics indeed seem a promising method in the prevention of upper respiratory infections and our study would like to contribute to the results available in the literature, in order to underlie their true therapeutic potential role.
MATERIAL AND METHODS. Our multicenter pilot prospective study investigates 366 patients from September 2015 to February 2016. All the patients were treated with a topical device made up of a suspension of two specific bacterial strains: Streptococcus salivarius 24SMB and Streptococcus oralis 89a to be administered as nasal spray. The nasal spray was administered twice daily for 7 days per month for three consecutive months. A questionnaire about the subjective efficacy of the therapy correlated to an improvement of symptoms was also collected from patients.
RESULTS. After one year from the enrolment, a 70.07% reduction in the number of events compared with the number of expected episodes was observed.
CONCLUSION. The aim of our data is to propose a new therapeutic approach to treat the recurrence of upper airway infection and to support an adequate therapy in all cases where the traditional antibiotic therapeutic protocol did not obtain completely efficient results in terms of recurrence.