18 Fecal microbial metabolite profiles are unaltered by laminitis history

Abstract

Microbial metabolites of the equine gastrointestinal tract may confer information about health and susceptibility to disease. Laminitis is often associated with metabolic disturbances, but little is known of its impact on functional microbial metabolism. A pilot study compared metabolomic profiles of feces collected from 55 native ponies, comprising n = 15 pairs of previously laminitic (PL) and non-laminitic (NL) ponies matched for location, diet, and management, and n = 25 ponies suspected of having an active episode of laminitis (SL) but without clinical diagnosis. Targeted liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis was used. Univariate analyses (ANOVA with Fisher's least significant difference comparisons of PL, NL and SL groups) was performed with significance set at P < 0.05 following Benjamini-Hochberg correction. Principal component analysis (PCA) wasapplied to visualize clustering of individuals. Analysis was performed using the MetaboAnalyst 5.0 web-based interface. Of a panel of 167 metabolites, 104 were identified in the feces, however, none were significantly different between the laminitis status groups. Assessment of the PCA scores plot revealed no clustering of individuals by metabolic profile based on laminitis status. The similar fecal metabolite profile of previously laminitic and non-laminitic ponies indicates that laminitis may not result in significant long-term, alteration of microbial metabolism. Future work to combine these data with that of microbial abundance and species diversity in the feces may reveal further insights into the functional microbial metabolism in laminitic and healthy animals.