Efficacy of strain-specific postbiotic administration on relief of
AD symptoms
All nine studies reported the reduction of AD symptoms. However, only
eight were included in the network meta-analysis as one study provided
insufficient data to allow pooling. This study reported that SCORAD
values were significantly lower at 6 months of treatment using Mix
postbiotic preparation (median 11.4 points for Mix, 19.4 points for
placebo; p=0.02) but not at 9 months of treatment (median 9.5 points for
Mix, 14.8 points for placebo, p=0.08).9
Figure 4a shows the interval plot containing the SMD and 95% CI of each
postbiotic strain compared to placebo. LR had the most favorable effect
with SMD -0.53 (95% CI of -1.02 to -0.04), indicating statistically
significant reduction in symptoms compared to placebo. MV2 had the least
favorable effect with SMD= 0.03, indicating possible increase in
symptoms. However, MV2, LP1, LP2, LS, MV1, and MV3, have wide CIs which
preclude definite conclusions from being made.
The league table, ranking probabilities and SUCRA values are in the
Supplementary File. LR was the highest-ranked while MV2 was the
lowest-ranked strain for the efficacy outcome.