Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Lactobacillus acidophilus
Background
Lactobacilli are bacteria that normally live in the human small intestine and vagina. Lactobacillus acidophilus is generally considered to be beneficial because it produces vitamin K, lactase, and anti-microbial substances such as acidolin, acidolphilin, lactocidin, and bacteriocin. Multiple human trials report benefits of L. acidophilus for bacterial vaginosis. Other medicinal uses of L. acidophilus are not sufficiently studied to form clear conclusions.
The term "probiotic" is used to describe organisms that are used medicinally, including bacteria such as L. acidophilus and yeast such as Saccharomyces boulardii .
Although generally believed to be safe with few side effects, oral L. acidophilus should be avoided in people with intestinal damage, a weakened immune system, or with overgrowth of intestinal bacteria.
NS_patient-acidophilus
Portions of this document last updated:Sept. 1, 2009
THE NATURAL STANDARD RESEARCH COLLABORATION
(www.naturalstandard.com)
