[01] Mogana Baskaran, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Melaka, Malaysia. [02] Cheng Fern Ni, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Melaka, Malaysia. [03] Tan Jia Wen, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Melaka, Malaysia. [04] Malsha Indeewari Vithange, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka-Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Melaka, Malaysia.

Constipation is one of the most common digestive complaints, with a prevalence of 5–20% in the general population and is defined by infrequent passage of hard stools usually 3 times or less in a week with complaint of straining, sensation of incomplete evacuation, perianal or abdominal discomfort. Many research has been done on the effect of probiotics on constipation, yet the research done is limited when comparing both yakult and yogurt together. Our research is to determine the effect of cultured milk (Yakult) in increasing stool frequency, improve stool consistency and relieving constipation compared to yogurt. A randomized controlled trial was conducted from May 2019 to June 2019 in private medical college, Malaysia. The sampling method done in our study was convenience sampling. A total of 30 students from 3^rd and 4^th year of the private medical college, Malaysia had voluntarily participated in this study. Block randomization was used to randomly assign the participants into 2 groups which were the intervention group and the control group where each group had 15 students. 80ml of cultured milk (yakult) was given to the participants in the intervention group and 125g of plain yogurt was given to the participants in the control group for 3 days continuously after their lunch. We followed up the participants for 3 days and asked if they were experiencing any side effects like nausea, abdominal cramp, bloating and flatulence during the study. After 3 days, any changes in the bowel habits according to the Bristo6l stool chart were noted. Our result showed that there was no significant difference between cultured milk (yakult) and the control group on relieving constipation at day-1 (P=0.361), day-2 (0.999) and day-3 (P=0.999). However, there is a significant difference of Bristol score between before (mean 2.13, SD 0.52) and after (mean 3.81, SD 0.80) providing cultured milk (intervention group) (P<0.001). Similarly there is a significant difference of Bristol score between before (mean 2.21, SD 0.56) and after providing yogurt (control group) (mean 3.56, SD 1.02) (P<0.001). We can conclude that consuming probiotics does relieve constipation and it brought significant effect among the undergraduate medical students.

Cultured Milk, Yogurt, Constipation, Medical Students, Experiment

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