Probiotic Supplementation and Bone Health Parameters in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
An erratum to this article was published (Osteoporos Int, Aug 2026 ↗)
Authors' conclusion
Based on the evidence from the currently available RCTs, probiotic supplementation appears to lead to modest but statistically significant improvement in lumbar spine BMD and, to a lesser extent, hip BMD in postmenopausal women.
Study context
- Population
- Adults in RCTs of probiotic supplementation reporting bone mineral density (BMD), CTX or P1NP; most trials in postmenopausal women
- Comparison
- Probiotic supplementation vs control
- Outcome
- Bone health parameters (pooled weighted MDs)
Methodological detailsrandom-effects model, Searched PubMed, Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure
- Random-effects model
- Searched PubMed, Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure
Pooled result
As reported in the abstract
Lumbar spine aBMD significantly increased (n = 16)
+ 0.010
Hip aBMD significantly increased (n = 9)
+ 0.022 g/cm²
Further pooled results
Subgroup and sensitivity analyses
- Tendency toward increased lumbar spine aBMD across subgroups, not always significant
- Restricting to postmenopausal women: results consistent with main analyses
- Lumbar spine aBMD increase remained significant regardless of trial exclusion; hip aBMD effect became non-significant when key trials omitted
Original publication
Probiotic Supplementation and Bone Health Parameters in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Osteoporos Int. Published 31 October 2025. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →