This editorial is an overview of a conference (Bacteria and Intestinal Health: From Infants to Adults) held in Milan Italy (February 11, 2012) to address issues in recommendations for the use of probiotics in clinical practice. Experts in pediatrics, gastroenterology and other internal medicine disciplines including probiotics researchers attended the conference. The general consensus of the conference attendees can be summarized as follows. Evidence from high-quality randomized controlled trials now exists for the therapeutic use of probiotics in infectious diarrhea in children, recurrent C. difficile-induced infections and post-operatives pouchitis. Additional evidence is accumulating for the use of probiotics in other gastrointestinal disorders, IBS and IBD. Unfortunately the current literature is a mixture of studies on different probiotic bacteria, at different dose, not all of which will have the same therapeutic effect.
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