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French researchers found that a bacterium called Lactobacillus Acidophilus NCFM improved pain in irritable bowel syndrome. Irritable Bowel Syndrome can be very irritating. You can get a variety of symptoms like alternating loose motions with constipation, feeling bloated and tummy pain relieved by going to the bathroom. This is in a person who's had it since either youth or young adulthood and is otherwise well, has no bleeding and isn't losing weight. Some people are really bothered by irritable bowel but there aren't very good treatments around. There is a little evidence that probiotics can help - live bacteria - but the trials haven't been very well conducted. A recent laboratory study though suggests that it may only be very specific bacteria which have an effect. French researchers found that a bacterium called Lactobacillus Acidophilus NCFM, used in dietary supplements and certain yoghurts, very effectively dampened down pain receptors in the intestine. This was done initially on test tube cultures of intestinal cells then on rats in whom the acidophilus reduced bowel hypersensitivity by about the same amount as an injection of morphine. If these findings are real then it might point the way to far better and more specific trials of this bacterium in humans.
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