Probiotics in the Treatment of Radiotherapy-Induced Oral Mucositis: Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis

Abstract

The inflammatory injury of the mucous membranes lining the digestive tract, from the mouth to the anus, is called mucositis. One of the intriguing and compelling new therapeutic modalities that has emerged in recent decades due to advances in our understanding of this condition’s pathophysiology is probiotics. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to evaluate the efficiency of probiotics in the treatment of chemotherapy-induced mucositis for head and neck malignancies; a literature search was performed on PubMed, Lilacs, and Web of Science, and articles published from 2000 to 31 January 2023 were considered, according to the keywords entered. The term “Probiotics” was combined with “oral mucositis” using the Boolean connector AND; at the end of the research, 189 studies were identified from the search on the three engines. Only three were used to draw up the present systematic study and metanalysis; this meta-analysis showed that the treatment of mucositis with probiotics is an effective method, and the analysis of the results of these studies showed that the use of probiotics promoted a decrease in the severity of mucositis symptoms.