Ulcerative Colitis

“It was remarkable: the inflammation went down, and they stopped experiencing pain and diarrhoea,” says Professor George Macfarlane, whose results were published in January.

“We did not think it would be as effective as it was.” He is now looking for funding for a more detailed trial, but neither the drug companies nor the Government are interested.

“It's an area that urgently needs to be looked into: there are people out there with distressing conditions like colitis, Crohn's disease and even arthritis that may be helped one day.

“The biggest problem is that we don't know what these things are capable of.

We go into our health food shop and buy lactobacillus and it may work or it may not.

It's a case of suck it and see at the moment until bigger trials are carried out.” In a round-up last October of all the trials so far, the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin could only conclude that they were inconclusive.

Researchers looked at “Frankly, the studies are not that great,” says associate editor Helen Barnett.

“With irritable bowel syndrome, for example, we found five studies, but so...

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