WSU BIOL209 Microbiology

A community can only be protected when 92 percent or more of a population is immunized, and many of L.A.'s elementary schools are dipping far below that number. These parents aren't just risking their own kids' health, they're risking everyone's.

Still, he added, taking them doesn’t seem harmful. “It’s a relatively low-cost treatment worth trying if you have a condition like Crohn’s disease,” he said. “But for most conditions, the potential benefit is uncertain.”

There is growing evidence for the role of the appendix in restoring a healthful balance of microbes in the body.

The challenge in taking probiotics is to get the microbes past the stomach, where most are killed by gastric acid, said Robert Dunn, a biologist at North Carolina State University. Once in the intestines, they must compete effectively with the microbes already present.