Abstract
Gut microbiota serves as a critical indicator for gut health during treatment of pathogenic bacterial infection. Both Pulsatilla Decoction (abbreviated to PD, a traditional Chinese medicine compound) and Levofloxacin Hydrochloride (LVX) were known to have therapeutic effects to intestinal infectious disease. However, the changes of gut microbiota after PD or LVX treatment remain unclear. Herein, this work aimed to investigate the changes of intestinal flora after PD or LVX therapy of Escherichia coli infection in rats. Results revealed that PD exhibited a valid therapeutic approach for E. coli infection via the intestinal protection, as well as the inhibited release of IL-8 and ICAM-1. Besides, PD was beneficial to rebuild the gut microbiota via restoring Bacteroidetes spp in the composition of the gut microbiota. Comparatively, LVX treatment promoted the infection and ravaged gut microbiota by significantly decreasing Bacteroidetes and increasing Firmicutes. These findings not only highlight the mechanism of Chinese herbal formula, but extend the application of PD as veterinary medicine, feed additive and pre-mixing agent for improving the production of animal derived foods.
Highlights
Gut microbiota plays a fundamental role in providing the colonization resistance of intestinal tissues against the exogenous pathogenic bacteria (Baumler and Sperandio, 2016)
We firstly compared the intestinal tissue under Pulsatilla Decoction (PD) or Levofloxacin Hydrochloride (LVX) treatment of E. coli infection by a HE staining assay
We found that E. coli infection led to mucosa lamina propria coagulation necrosis, focal necrosis with inflammatory cell infiltration and mucosa lamina propria with congestion (Figure 2A), suggesting that the infection was proceeding
Summary
Gut microbiota plays a fundamental role in providing the colonization resistance of intestinal tissues against the exogenous pathogenic bacteria (Baumler and Sperandio, 2016). When it comes to infectious diseases, the problem emerged as antibiotics, especially the broad-spectrum ones cannot distinguish the intestinal beneficial bacteria from the exogenous harmful bacteria (Blaser, 2016; Lange et al, 2016). Intestinal inflammation that is tightly linked with altered gut microbiota might be triggered by antibiotic treatment (Belkaid and Hand, 2014; Slager et al, 2014; Becattini et al, 2016). Most recent researches revealed that the drug-resistant pathogens could further promote the spread of resistant plasmid in gut and induce secondary infection (Bakkeren et al, 2019; Wu et al, 2020)
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