Talk:Lactobacillus rhamnosus

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Is this bacteria (Lactobacillus GG) available as a food supplement in the UK ? I am aware it can be found in a product marketed by Culturelle (in the US), but it appears not to be marketed in the UK (by Culturelle or others) Teeteetee 02:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Vitamin Research Products is a very savvy manufacturer and distributor of such products that I've been doing inside the US business with for nearly two decades, and their Product Restrictions list does not include it for any country. Culturelle won't ship it to you, but I assume any US distributor that does international shipments would be happy to do so.

Sinus infections are an all too common problem for me, and I routinely take it after the antibiotics are finished. Hga 13:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, very useful info, I wonder why a main producer of a product is not supplying to UK, ...maybe safety regulations OR commercially unprofitable ?? Teeteetee 12:06, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

You're very welcome.

The US market is so big (like the EU, but without pretty much any barriers between the 50 states), that many if not most US companies never even think of exporting, at least not early in the game. In this case, I think the company just doesn't want the hassle, it probably isn't profitable to directly serve such a small market, which no doubt has its own rules and laws about these sorts of things. Instead, they do it at arm's length, through US distributors who ship overseas.

I'm sure if some U.K. company approached them, they'd "play ball" and arrange something, but they have no reason to do it themselves for 100+ foreign countries, not with a working producer-distributor division of labor. Hga 13:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like there is a much simpler answer for why Culturelle isn't marketed in the U.K. and so on. From an in package Q&A brochure dated 2006, answering "Is LGG(R) Safe?", the second sentence is "Although CULTURELLE(R) with LGG(R) is relatively new to the United States, millions of Europeans of all ages (infants, children, adults and the elderly) have taken LGG(R) over the last 20 years." Elsewhere they say there have been over 250 clinical studies (!), and elsewhere on Wikipedia it would seem that probiotics are a bigger thing in Europe.

So the answer is probably nothing more complicated than that LGG is widely available in Europe, even if G and G isolated it in Boston, and sending CULTURELLE overseas would be like "Shipping coal to Newcastle" ^_^, to use the most appropriate phrase. Hga 00:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)