Investigation of  the faecal microbiota associated with canine chronic diarrhoea

Abstract

Diarrhoea is a common problem in dogs and can result in disturbance of the normal intestinal microbiota. However, little is known about the gastrointestinal microbiota of dogs with chronic diarrhoea and controlled canine studies of dietary management are scarce. The aims of this study were to investigate the predominant faecal microbiota of chronic diarrhoea dogs and to examine the effect(s) of a fibre blend on the canine faecal microbiota. A 3-week fibre supplementation feeding study was performed in nine chronic diarrhoea and eight control dogs. Atopobium cluster, Lactobacillus-Enterococcus group and Clostridium cluster XIV were the predominant bacterial groups in all dogs. Chronic diarrhoea dogs had significantly higher Bacteroides counts at baseline and significantly lower Atopobium cluster counts following fibre supplementation compared with control dogs. Atopobium cluster levels increased significantly in control dogs, while counts of sulphatereducing bacteria decreased significantly and Clostridium clusters I and II counts increased significantly in chronic diarrhoea dogs during fibre supplementation. Microbial profiles (detected by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis) demonstrated interindividual variation, with greater similarity seen between the chronic diarrhoea and control dogs' profiles after fibre supplementation compared with baseline. In conclusion, fibre supplementation induced changes in the canine faecal microbiota, with greater resemblance between the microbiota of chronic diarrhoea and control dogs after this dietary modulation.

Taxonomy, Physiology, and Natural Products of Actinobacteria

“…The phyla Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Fusobacteria, and Proteobacteria constitute more than 99% of all gut microbiota in dogs and cats. Compared with the case in humans, which harbor 10 18 bacterial cells, Bifidobacteria is less abundant in cats and dogs (492,493).…”

COMPANION ANIMALS SYMPOSIUM: Microbes and gastrointestinal health of dogs and cats1

“…It is likely that these discrepancies may be due to differences in DNA extraction methods and PGR protocols between studies. Actinobacteria were identified as highly abundant in fecal samples using comparative chaperonin 60 gene sequence analysis and fiuorescence in situ hybridization (Inness et al, 2007;Desai et al, 2009;Jia et al, 2010). This is not surprising, because it has been shown that 16S rRNA gene approaches with universal bacterial primers typically underestimate Actinobacteria (Ritchie et al, 2010).…”

“…-Ritchie et al, 2008Suchodolski et al, 2008aSuchodolski et al, , 2009Suchodolski et al, . 'inness et al, 2007Jia et al, 2010. FISH = fluorescence in situ hybridization.…”

Allometry of animal–microbe interactions and global census of animal-associated microbes

“…The microbial counts for humans, domestic animals, chickens, ducks and termites were obtained from Whitman et al [11], but required division of the total number of microbes associated with the entire population of a species by the total abundance of that species. Microbial counts for some animals were derived from the published volumes of the gut organs and direct microscopic counts of microbes per gram or millilitre of gut contents; this approach was used for oxen [16,17], Balaenoptera acutorostrata (minke whales) [16,18,19], horses [16,17], Xestospongia muta (giant sponges) [20], dogs [16,21], guinea pigs [22], R. pachyptila (hydrothermal vent tube worm) [23], hamsters [16,22,24], Apostichopus japonicas (sea cucumbers) [25][26][27], mice [16,22], Hirudo medicinalis (medicinal leeches) [28], Lumbricus rubellus (earthworms) [29,30] and Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill) [31]. Microbial abundances for several insect species were published as microscopic counts per individual animal [15], and these were used directly.…”