Abstract
This study aimed to evaluate the effect of supplementation with inulin-type fructans (ITFs) on the intestinal immune function in the context of dysbiosis resulting from antibiotic cocktail (ABx) treatment. BALB/c mice (8–9 weeks of age) were treated with an ABx for 3 weeks and then allowed to recover spontaneously or with ITF supplementation (5%) for 4 weeks. Our results showed that ABx treatment can induce gut microbiota dysbiosis and intestinal inflammation in mice. After 4 weeks of recovery, ITF supplementation restored the composition of the intestinal microbial community. However, compared with spontaneous recovery, ITF supplementation delayed inflammation recovery in the intestine and upregulated diamine oxidase (DAO) activity and increased lipopolysaccharide (LPS) content in serum. In addition, ITF supplementation delayed the regulatory T (Treg) cell and B cell recovery in the lamina propria (LP). Furthermore, compared with spontaneous recovery, ITF supplementation inhibited the relative expression of certain proinflammatory genes, such as for inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and tumour necrosis factor α (Tnf-α), in the colon, but it reduced the secretion of the anti-inflammatory mediator transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) in serum, reduced the secretion of secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA) in the colon and promoted the secretion of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-17A. In conclusion, these data supported the hypothesis that the influence of ITFs on the host’s intestinal status is not always beneficial in the context of ABx-induced biological disorder. However, the significance of these findings needs to be determined by advanced studies
Key Points
• ITFs did not promote the recovery of microbial community composition.
• ITFs delayed the recovery of ABx-induced colonic inflammation.
• ITFs reduced the secretion of TGF-β1 and SIgA.
• ITFs delayed the recovery of Treg and B cells in the LP.
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Data availability
Microbiota 16S rDNA gene sequencing data have been deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Sequence Read Archive (SRA) (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/). The accession numbers for the microbiota data reported in this paper are PRJNA732101 with the BioSample accession numbers SAMN19312307-SAMN19312315 and PRJNA601050 with the BioSample accession numbers SAMN13841008-SAMN13841010 and SAMN13841002-SAMN13841004. All the data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplemental information files).
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Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 81703053); Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (grant number: 2018B020206001); Guangdong Provincial Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation and Extension Project in 2021 (grant number: 2021KJ101); Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (grant no. 2018A030313860); and Innovative and Strong School Project of Guangdong Higher Education Institutions (2017KZDXM049, 2017KCXTD020).
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C. T. designed this study and gave guidance. W. Z. performed the experiments, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. Q. Z. and G. F. helped conduct experiments. G. L. collected important background information. F. W. and H. S. helped analyse the data. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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All the animal experimental protocols were approved by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Pharmaceutical University and carried out in compliance with the national and international guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals.
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Zeng, W., Zhang, Q., Feng, G. et al. The effect of inulin-type fructans on the intestinal immune function of antibiotic-treated mice. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 106, 3265–3278 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-022-11896-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-022-11896-0