4.1. The URTIs Frequency and Severity
infections, URTIs, URTIs symptoms
INFECTIONS, IMMUNODEFICIENCY
The most important parameters tested in our trial were frequency and severity of URTIs. These parameters are considered to best reflect the effectiveness of the immune system and belong to the group of major indicators of immunodeficiency in clinical practice. However, they depend not only on the individual’s immunity status. The frequency of URTIs is strongly related to intensity of exposure to infectious agents, which may be affected by the seasonal epidemiological changes and the nature of the individual’s social interactions with the environment. On the other hand, the frequency, as well as the severity of URTIs, also depend importantly on the general physical fitness, which may be affected by heavy workload exhausting the energetic and structural resources, which are crucial for appropriate immunity status.Previously, the experiments with colostrum supplementation applied to usually “overworked” and exhausted trial participants, such as professional athletes, were consistently successful in improving protection from URTIs [In our trial we selected two groups of participants: “normal” population of healthy young people as control (health science students—HSci) and the “at risk” population of their hard-working peers (medical students—MED)—the exposure to infectious agents and the workload parameters differed in both. Studying medicine is known to be related to a much higher load of various duties and stressful situations compared to HSci studies, thus it can be regarded an extreme condition that increases the risk of URTIs in a fashion parallel to athletic activity.In addition to the differences resulting from a variety in workload related to the course of the study, these subpopulations attended theoretical courses in separate university venues. Moreover, the academic activities of medical students were predominantly held in healthcare facilities (hospital units and outpatient clinics), whereas HSci students practically did not access such facilities for their lessons. This was mainly because all medical students were third year students who have plenty of practical classes, whereas majority of HSci courses students were first year students, participating mainly in theoretical courses. All these have caused high heterogeneity in risk of exposure to infectious agents between these two subpopulations. Dissecting our participants into two independent populations (HSci and MED) allowed us to maintain high homogeneity of such created groups in both workload and risk of exposure, which was confirmed by the trial results. There were numerous differences between groups in regard to URTI frequency and severity both between untreated groups (PBO) as well as in reaction to colostrum supplementation (COL) groups.When we analyzed the entire population of students without dissecting them into HSci and MED groups over the whole trial period, the results regarding the frequency and severity of URTIs showed no statistically significant difference between the colostrum and placebo groups (Other interesting findings appeared when we analyzed the URTIs symptoms days frequency after dissecting our experiment into three distinct periods: period I—days 1–45—supplementation, period II—days 46–86—no regular supplementation and period III—days 87–107—final one-week long supplementation and two weeks of follow up period. We found statistically significant differences between PBO and COL in MED vs. HSci group in all three periods of the study (periods I, II and III, respectively, Parallel analysis of URTIs severity in individual periods of the trial has brought no statistically significant results in regard to the difference between COL and PBO groups; in both, global population of students was analyzed when divided into HSci and MED groups.Our results regarding decrease in frequency and severity of URTIs symptoms upon consuming colostrum in students show clearly that healthy young people can benefit from this kind of supplementation only when they become exposed to a higher risk of developing these infections, such as with participants from the MED group in our experiment. There was relatively low frequency of URTIs over 3.5 fall/winter months of our trial with only 10.6 days with URTIs symptoms (including the mildest) on average, which was 1.11 URTIs episodes per person, whereas the expected frequency is between 2 to 4 episodes per year [