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Probiotics Reduce the Prevalence of Oral Candida in the Elderly—a Randomized Controlled Trial

¹ Valio Ltd, R&D, PO Box 30, FIN-00039 Helsinki, Finland;
² Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Helsinki University Central Hospital;
³ Institute of Dentistry, University of Helsinki, Finland;
⁴ Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, University of Helsinki, Finland;
⁵ STAT-Consulting, Tampere, Finland;
⁶ Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Diseases, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland;
⁷ Department of Pharmacology, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Helsinki, Finland; and
⁸ Foundation for Nutrition Research, Helsinki, Finland

^* corresponding author, katja.hatakka{at}valio.fi

Overgrowth of oral yeast is a common problem among the elderly. Probiotic bacteria are known to inhibit the growth of pathogenic microbes. We tested the hypothesis that cheese containing probiotic bacteria can reduce the prevalence of oral Candida. During this 16-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 276 elderly people consumed daily 50 g of either probiotic (n = 136) or control cheese (n = 140). The primary outcome measure was the prevalence of a high salivary yeast count ( 10⁴ cfu/mL) analyzed by the Dentocult^® method. The prevalence decreased in the probiotic group from 30% to 21% (32% reduction), and increased in the control group from 28% to 34%. Probiotic intervention reduced the risk of high yeast counts by 75% (OR = 0.25, 95%CI 0.10–0.65, p = 0.004), and the risk of hyposalivation by 56% (OR = 0.44, 95%CI 0.19–1.01, p = 0.05). Thus, probiotic bacteria can be effective in controlling oral Candida and hyposalivation in the elderly.

KEY WORDS: probiotics • Lactobacillus GG • Candida • the elderly • randomized trial • hyposalivation

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