The development of probiotics for women’s health

The idea you could insert lactic acid bacteria into the vagina or take them orally to treat and prevent urogenital infections was ridiculed in the early 1980s. The only interest in bacteria was to eradicate them by antibiotic therapy, damn the consequences to those that might be present for beneficial reasons. Thirty years later, probiotic administration of microbes is widespread worldwide, including for vaginal and bladder health in women, and the scientific basis and clinical efficacy data for this and multiple other applications prove the viability of this concept. The development of this approach, the creation of a definition for probiotics and the expansion to other areas of womenâ s health form the basis of this review.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author