A Nova Scotia teenager has become one of the youngest people ever to have a research paper published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Lindsey Edmunds' work on probiotics began as a Grade 10 science fair project. Lindsey, 17, is now in Grade 12. She became interested in the subject when her sister Andrea had digestive-tract problems after taking antibiotics to treat a sinus infection.

It had turned out that the antibiotics had killed all of the friendly bacteria that you need in your intestines to keep you healthy, and that just made her really sick and the doctors just didn't know that's what was going on, so they just kept giving her more antibiotics, which was just making the process even worse, said Lindsey on Canada AM.

Probiotics -- live microbial supplements which are thought to restore intestinal bacteria balance -- were suggested as an alternative treatment for Andrea. Lindsey proceeded to do research on probiotics, and her family decided to put Andrea on them, without a doctor's consent.

Lindsey then decided to find out why probiotics weren't prescribed very often.

I did a survey of 100 doctors in Nova Scotia and asked them if they prescribed antibiotics and my results were pretty surprising -- finding out that most people did not prescribe probiotics, and some of them didn't even know what it was, said Lindsey.

The response from the survey formed the basis of Edmunds' paper. Edmunds found that 21 per cent of physicians prescribed probiotics, but not on a regular basis.