Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2020, Vol. 51 ›› Issue (8): 1878-1885.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2020.08.011

• ANIMAL NUTRITION AND FEEDS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Preliminary Report of the Therapeutic Effect of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation on Non-specific Pathogenic Diarrhea in Suckling Lambs

WANG Yan1, TENG Xiaoxiao1, YANG Ningzhi1, LI Ting1, CHEN Zhuo1, Eskandar·eslam1, WANG Zhi1, QI Laifang1, LIU Jiajia2, YANG Huiguo2, ZHAO Hongqiong1*, YAO Gang1*   

  1. 1. College of Veterinary Medicine, Xinjiang Agricultural University, Urumqi 830052, China;
    2. Institute of Animal Science, Xinjiang Academy of Animal Sciences, Urumqi 830026, China
  • Received:2020-03-02 Online:2020-08-25 Published:2020-08-19

Abstract: Lamb diarrhea is one of the common gastrointestinal diseases during the newborn and weaning stage that can result in lamb's growth retardation and even death. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has little been applied on the prevention and treatment of digestive tract diseases in young ruminants. In this study, FMT was used to treat diarrhea lambs with the comparison by using different antibiotics so as to explore the therapeutic effect of FMT on suckling lambs' diarrhea. Sixty suckling lambs (male and female in half) with significant clinical symptoms of diarrhea and 10 healthy lambs (male and female in half) at the age of (24±2) days and body weight of (6.12±1.01) kg were divided into 7 groups, namely, healthy control (HC), saline control (SC), fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), gentamicin (GM), enrofloxacin (ENR), gentamicin+FMT (GM+FMT) and enrofloxacin+FMT (ENR+FMT) treatment, with 10 lambs each. The healing time (day), average daily gain (ADG), physio-biochemical indexes and the diarrhea related inflammatory factor markers were measured. The results showed: 1) ADG, RBC, HGB, the percentage of lymphocyte and the concentration of serum creatinine (CREA) in SC group were all significantly lower than those of HC group (P<0.05), whereas the MCHC and inflammatory factors in SC group were significantly higher than those of HC group (P<0.05). 2) Compared with SC group, after 5 methods of treatment, the FMT, ENR, ENR + FMT, and GM groups all significantly reduced the healing time (P<0.05) except for the GM + FMT group. Only after ENR treatment the ADG was significantly increased (P<0.05). 3) In comparison with SC group, FMT treatment significantly increased the blood hemoglobin content (HGB) and blood lymphocyte number (P<0.05). 4) After FMT, ENR and GM+FMT treatment the inflammatory factors measured were all significantly declined to the level as that in healthy lambs (P<0.05). It is indicated that FMT could treat the lamb's diarrhea effectively by shortening the healing time, improvement of physio-biochemical statues and the inhibition of inflammation in diarrheic lambs. FMT could be an alternative way of lambs' diarrhea treatment by antibiotics in practice.

Key words: lamb, diarrhea, fecal microbiota transplantation, blood physio-biochemical index, inflammatory factor

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