Employment within healthcare settings can place a significant strain on the general wellbeing of staff, particularly during the winter. There is a link between health and wellbeing and the composition of the gut microbiota and daily supplementation with probiotics has been shown to stabilise/modulate the gut microbiota which may help support the health and wellbeing of healthcare workers.

In this exploratory, single-arm, open-label, remotely-conducted study, National Health Service employees in Wales received a daily dose of probiotic for 8 weeks over the winter season and those volunteering to take part reported their perception of quality of life including sleep quality, energy levels and mood and their physical discomforts including bloating and muscle ache at weekly intervals throughout the intervention period (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05968209).

Compared to the start of the study, their sleep quality significantly improved by 34.2%, their energy levels by 29.2% and their overall mood by 24.3% after 8 weeks of probiotic supplementation. Their general wellbeing had significantly improved by 16%. The prevalence of bloating decreased significantly from 75% at the start of the study to 42% by the study end, and muscle aches fell from 76% to 45%.

The findings indicate that the wellbeing of healthcare workers over the winter months improved whilst receiving daily probiotic supplementation. Further work is required in a placebo-controlled, randomised, double-blind study.

DJ, DM, NC, TW and SFP are/were employees of Cultech Ltd and had no role in recruitment or data collection but contributed to the design of the study, data analysis and interpretation and/or writing, reviewing, and approval of the final manuscript.

NCT05968209

This work was funded by Cultech Ltd (Port Talbot, UK).

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

Ethical approval from the Health Research Authority (HRA) and Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW) gave ethical approval for this work (reference 23/HCRW/0033)

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

Yes

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

Yes

I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.

Yes

All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors