22 Aug 2017 --- A team of scientists has discovered that a combination of probiotics and prebiotics was very effective in lowering the risk of developing sepsis – a life-threatening condition where infections cause systemic inflammation, restricted blood flow and organ failure – in 4,557 babies enrolled in a study in India. Sepsis is one of the biggest killers of newborn babies, ending around 600,000 young lives every year. The discovery has been hailed as one of the first big successful trials involving probiotics.