Vsl # 3

[Daunting]

Hi All.

After my scheduled appt with my GI on Tuesday he prescribed VSL#3 a very strong probiotic.

Has anyone ever tried this yet??

I took my first sachet this morning and feel pretty yucky, bloating and some abdominal cramps. He only wants me to take it for 10 days, lets home this yuck feeling goes away.

 

[2thFairy]

I took it for a few months. I was going to say that I had I had no adverse reactions, but I completely forgot about the bloating and gas. For the first month, it cut my diarrhea in half, but after that the D continued as it had before. I took it in capsule form. The bloating did get better after a few weeks, but if you are only on it for 10 days, you may not have much improvement in that area.

I hope it does you some good, though!!!

 

[Daunting]

Thanks for the Info.

But the bloating is driving me crazy. I can't wait to be done this stuff in 10 days. I'm not even hungry and I have abdominal cramping. yuck

 

[kiny]

Not sure why only for 10 days, probiotics need to be taken for quite a while before they have any effect. There are thousands of colonies in the intestines of people and using probiotics for really short amount of time or stopping for a few days makes the probiotic useless. It needs to be constantly fed and nurtured for a long time with new probiotics before it is able to take it's place into the flora.

Bad bacteria are able to form biofilms and attach themselves against the gut wall, if you don't use probiotics long enough the strain just gets wiped out, you need to "feed it".

 

[7vNH]

This paper Probiotic Therapy for Ulcerative Colitis references several studies on UC patients.

One study that indicated that VSL#3 was effective at inducing remission in recently diagnosed children. After one year, 3 of the 14 VSL#3 patients relapsed and 11 of the 15 placebo patients relapsed.

Miele E, Pascarella F, Giannetti E, et al. Effect of a probiotic
preparation (VSL#3) on induction and maintenance of remission
in children with ulcerative colitis. Am J Gastroenterol. 2009;104:
437–443.

Another study, this time with adults that took VSL#3 for 12 weeks (3.6x10^12, twice a day, which is 8 VSL#3 sachets at 450B each). At the end of 12 weeks, 33 of 77 VSL#3 patients had remission versus 11 of 77 placebo patients. So even though the VSL#3 percentage remission (43%) isn't great, it's three times as good as the do-nothing scenario. The problem would be paying the $1,900 to get the VSL#3 to cover the 12 weeks!

Sood A, Midha V, Makharia GK, et al. The probiotic preparation,
VSL#3 induces remission in patients with mild-to-moderately active
ulcerative colitis. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2009;7:1202–1209.