For this writing exercise, I will compose a rhetorical precis for the Siitonen et. al. article.

Precis

Siitonen and colleagues, researchers from various disciplines, asserted that ingestion of yogurt during a course of the antibiotic erythromycin reduces diarrheal symptoms. Siitonen and colleagues accomplished this by creating two groups that were on antibiotics and randomly assigning them a “yogurt” or “no yogurt” treatment and assessing their diarrheal symptoms. The purpose of this clinical trial was to investigate how probiotic supplementation may reduce the negative side effects of an antibiotics course so that we can further understand the link between antibiotics, eubiotic gut microbia, and adverse gastrointestinal side effects. This study was written with scholarly language and was published in The Annals of Medicine, which would suggest that this article was written for educated medical professionals, academics in the microbiological field, and other academics in other disciplines of biology.

References

Siitonen S, Vapaatalo H, Salminen S, Gordin A, Saxelin M, Wikberg R, Kirkkola AL. 1990. Effect of Lactobacillus GG yoghurt in prevention of antibiotic associated diarrhoea. Ann Med 22:57–59.