The yogurt was also associated with improvements in select biomarkers, including urine hippurate levels (a measure of greater diversity in the gut), levels of lactic acid bacteria, and secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI – an antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory protein that plays a role in host defense), according to data from the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.
Yoba for Life
The Yoba-for-Life Foundation (Yoba is derived from yo-gurt ba-cteria) is the brainchild of Remco Kort, Professor of microbiology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Dr. Wilbert Sybesma, founder and owner of Microbiome Solutions GmbH – Switzerland. The foundation aimed to develop a cheap probiotic that should also be the best described and with the best evidence. This led to Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG), which has been the subject of over 800 scientific publications.
Following the example of generic medicines, Kort and Sybesma aimed to produce a “generic” probiotic, and outlined their concept in a paper in Trends in Biotechnology. They sequenced their L. rhamnosus yoba strain to confirm that it was so similar to the original LGG strain that they could “copy and paste” the scientific substantiation behind LGG and connect it to L. rhamnosus yoba.
Just having the strain was not enough; the organization had to figure out a way to overcome the issue that L. rhamnosus yoba does not like lactose. The solution was to include Streptococcus thermophilus, which pre-digests the lactose to glucose and galactose and provides the food for L. rhamnosus yoba.
The last technical issue was to put these mixed strains together in small sachets. Data published in 2015 in Microbial Cell Factories showed that the viability of L. rhamnosus yoba was “stable during growth in milk for two rounds of fermentation. Sachets prepared with the two strains, yoba […] and [S. thermophilus], retained viability for at least 2 years.”
Commenting on the new study, Professor Kort told us that this randomized controlled trial adds valuable evidence to the growing body of research on the health benefits of locally produced probiotic yogurt in low-resource settings.
“While previous intervention studies within the Yoba for Life framework suggested reduced incidences of respiratory and skin infections in children consuming probiotic yogurt in children from 3 to 6 years old, this study provides controlled evidence of within-group improvements, including reduced respiratory tract infection (RTI) symptoms, increased bacterial load in feces (including lactic acid bacteria) and shifts in health-related biomarkers such as hippurate in urine and SLPI in saliva,” he said.
“Although differences between the intervention and placebo groups were modest, the study reaffirms the feasibility and safety of school-based probiotic nutrition programs.”
Study details
The study included 196 children in Uganda who were randomly assigned to receive either the probiotic yogurt containing L. rhamnosus yoba 2012 and S. thermophilus C106 or a non-fermented dairy placebo for nine weeks.
While there were no significant differences between the groups for the average daily incidence of upper respiratory tract symptoms, the Yoba yogurt group did produce significant reductions in RTI symptoms over time.
“The decreasing incidence rate of RTI symptoms in the probiotic yoghurt group relative to the placebo group during the intervention period suggests a positive effect of probiotic consumption on the incidence of RTI symptoms,” wrote the researchers. “This effect corresponds to the results of other studies and meta-analyses in which probiotic fermented dairy products, including food fermented with Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG, were administered to children.”
In addition, significant increases in urine hippurate levels, lactic acid bacteria, total bacterial load and saliva SLPI were observed in the yogurt group, compared to baseline.
Commenting on the overall findings, the researchers noted that it can take a couple of weeks to stimulate adaptive immunity, and the intervention period of eight weeks may therefore have been too short to adequately detect the effect of probiotic yogurt consumption.
Longer studies with additional controls in a more controlled setting (a boarding school) are needed before we can draw “definitive conclusions on the health impact of probiotic yoghurt consumption as part of school feeding programs,” they added.
The wider impact goals
Professor Kort told NutraIngredients that the findings “align with the wider impact goals of the Yoba for Life Foundation by supporting local dairy entrepreneurship in fermented food production through educational programs and the distribution of a self-developed starter culture, enhancing child health through accessible probiotic yoghurt produced from local milk, and embedding evidence-based nutrition into school feeding programs.
“With an estimated 10 million school-aged children in Uganda, and the probiotic yoghurt school feeding programs already reaching over 30,000 children in the southwestern region of Uganda alone, the infrastructure and scalability of this intervention are highly promising for the sub-Saharan African region.
“The study underscores the importance of real-world implementation research and further validates the Yoba for Life model as a community-empowering intervention to improve health outcomes in Africa,” he said.
Source: Scientific Reports, 2025, 15, 9478, doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-93603-3, “Effects of probiotic yogurt on relative respiratory tract infections, urine, saliva biomarkers, and fecal bacterial load in Ugandan children: a randomized controlled trial” Authors: W. Sybesma, et al.