Probiotics for treating novel coronavirus with diarrhea: A protocol for systematic review and meta analysis

BACKGROUND: The study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of probiotic therapy for coronavirus disease 2019 with diarrhea. METHODS: The following electronic bibliographic databases will be searched to identify relevant studies from December 2019 to December 2020: MEDLINE, PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Technical Periodicals, Wan-fang data, Chinese Biological Medicine Database, and other databases. The search results will not be restricted by language, all included articles were randomized controlled trial. Two independent researchers will conduct article retrieval, de-duplication, filtering, quality assessment, and data analysis through the Review Manager (V.5.3). Meta-analysis, subgroup analysis and/or descriptive analysis were performed on the included data. RESULTS: High-quality synthesis and/or descriptive analysis of current evidence will be provided from outcomes. CONCLUSION: This study will provide the evidence of whether probiotics is an effective and safe intervention for coronavirus disease 2019 with diarrhea. PROSPERO registration number: CRD42020192657.