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Abstract Weaning is one of the most stressful events for piglets, due to diet change from sow milk to grain-based feed. This diet change causes turnover of the gut microbial which can allow proliferation of pathogens leading to diarrhea. Antibiotics are administered to treat or prevent post-weaning diarrhea (PWD). Increased occurrence of antimicrobial resistance has increased incentives to develop viable antibiotic alternatives. PWD is most often caused by enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli. Similarly, in humans, severe diarrhea can be caused by Clostridium difficile colonization. Use of fecal microbiota transplants (FMT) has been shown to resolve C. difficile-induced diarrhea in 80 to 90% of human cases which may suggest FMT as a potential therapeutic option for post weaning diarrhea. We previously have shown that in feed fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) improved body weight (BW) gain in newly weaned piglets but it is not clear if this benefit will be replicated in piglets subjected to weaning stress. We hypothesize that FMT (in-feed) will increase colonization efficiency, improve growth performance and reduce diarrhea incidence compared with control in piglets subjected to post weaning stress. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of In-feed FMT of diarrhea index, growth performance and gut microbiota dynamics. Piglets (n = 240) subjected to physiological and transport weaning stress were allotted to 5 treatments: In-feed FMT (FMT1), doubles dose of In-feed FMT1 (FMT2), Oral gavage (FMT3), Antibiotic (positive control), and no supplementation (negative control). The donor material was screened for enterotoxigenic E. coli (F18 and F4). FMT was carried out for 14 d. Diarrhea index was observed for the first 14 d and animal BW, and fecal microbiota was collected by rectal swab on d 0, 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 32 for analysis of microbiota composition. DNA was extracted from fecal samples and 16S rRNA gene libraries (V4 region) were prepared for bacterial community analysis. Data were analyzed with one-way ANOVA in R. Only positive control had significantly decrease in diarrhea index and significant increase BW gain on d 14, 21, and 28 (P 0.05) but there was no effect of FMT (P 0.05). In conclusion, antibiotics but not FMT was efficient in alleviating the negative performance effect in piglets subjected to post-weaning stress.
Oladele et al. (Wed,) studied this question.