Preventive effect of pleuran (β-glucan from Pleurotus ostreatus) in children with recurrent respiratory tract infections – open-label prospective study

Recurrent Respiratory Tract Infections (RRTIs) are one of the most commonly occurring diseases and are typically associated with early childhood [1]. According to epidemiological studies, approximately 6% of children between 2−6 years suffer from RRTIs [2,3]. Due to their high incidence, RRTIs have an important socio-economic impact (affecting quality of life, causing absences from school and loss of parental working days, requiring repeated medical examinations, hospital admissions and also antibiotic prescriptions) [4,5]. Most of the children with RRTIs do not have any serious underlying disease and the high frequency of respiratory tract infections is the consequence of the combination of various minor factors (immune system immaturity, high exposure to infectious agents in family or children collective, environmental factors such as pollutants, chronic focal infections such as adenoid hypertrophy, etc.) [6]. Moreover, allergic inflammation in the airways can also contribute to the higher susceptibility to respiratory infections [7].