Abstract
Natural mineral water (NMWs) intake has been traditionally used in the treatment of various gastrointestinal diseases. We investigated the effect of two French NMWs, one a calcium and magnesium sulphate, sodium chloride, carbonic, and ferruginous water (NMW1), the other a mainly bicarbonate water (NMW2) on the prevention of intestinal inflammation. Intestinal epithelial cells stimulated with heat inactivated Escherichia coli or H2O2 were treated with NMWs to evaluate the anti-inflammatory effects. Moderate colitis was induced by 1% dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) in Balbc/J mice drinking NMW1, NWW2, or control water. General signs and histological features of colitis, fecal lipocalin-2 and pro-inflammatory KC cytokine levels, global mucosa-associated microbiota, were analyzed. We demonstrated that both NMW1 and NMW2 exhibited anti-inflammatory effects using intestinal cells. In induced-colitis mice, NMW1 was effective in dampening intestinal inflammation, with significant reductions in disease activity scores, fecal lipocalin-2 levels, pro-inflammatory KC cytokine release, and intestinal epithelial lesion sizes. Moreover, NMW1 was sufficient to prevent alterations in the mucosa-associated microbiota. These observations, through mechanisms involving modulation of the mucosa-associated microbiota, emphasize the need of investigation of the potential clinical efficiency of such NMWs to contribute, in human beings, to a state of low inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease.
Highlights
The beneficial effect of treatments using natural mineral waters (NMW) has been recognized for decades with water from several resorts in France and Europe recommended for various diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, such as gastric dyspepsia [1,2,3] and irritable bowel syndrome [2,4]
The effectiveness of thermal waters from 18 Italian thermal centers was evaluated in 3872 patients with functional dyspepsia and 3609 patients with irritable bowel syndrome, and a significant reduction in the prevalence of symptoms was observed at the end of the first and second cycles of thermal therapy in the dyspeptic and IBS patients [2]
This study showed that both tested NMW from Châtel-Guyon (NMW1) and Vichy (NMW2) exhibited anti-inflammatory properties in in vitro and in vivo models, more importantly with NMW1
Summary
The beneficial effect of treatments using natural mineral waters (NMW) has been recognized for decades with water from several resorts in France and Europe recommended for various diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, such as gastric dyspepsia [1,2,3] and irritable bowel syndrome [2,4]. A major difficulty in evaluating the effects of this treatment is the absence of specific biological markers of the pathologies evaluated, especially functional pathologies, and the absence of clear pathophysiological explanations of the causes of these diseases. These issues explain the difficulty in demonstrating objective changes in biological parameters specific to the conditions considered following spa treatment. Three groups or phyla (including over 500 species) dominate the human microbiota: Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria. Different variations in their quantitative representation have been associated with gastrointestinal diseases. With knowledge of the metagenome of the human intestinal microbiota, it is possible to monitor microbiota variations following spa treatment
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