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Many women are put off taking antibiotics because they fear they might come down with thrush. Many doctors recommend probiotics, which are found in yoghurt, but unfortunately they don't help. Many women are put off the idea of taking antibiotics because they fear they might come down with thrush: a yeast or Candida infection of the vagina which can be very uncomfortable. It's thought that the antibiotics clear out the normal bacteria allowing the Candida to take over. Many doctors recommend probiotics - live yoghurt or preparations of a live bacterium called lactobacillus. This makes sense because the probiotics are thought to help replace the normal bacteria. A group in Melbourne have performed a trial of oral and vaginal probiotics versus placebo in about 300 women to see whether they work. The group confirmed previous research which found that about one in four women develop thrush after antibiotics but many of them were already carrying Candida beforehand. It's just that the women got symptoms of thrush after taking the antibiotic. The study wasn't designed to find out whether one antibiotic is more likely than another to be linked to thrush. Unfortunately the probiotics didn't work. But they were safe, so if a woman decides to try them despite this study, she won't do herself any harm.
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