November 22, 2013

As it sought for alternatives to antibiotics, German researchers have found that piglets fed with probiotic Enterococcus faecium showed reduced numbers of potentially pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli) strains in their intestines.

The American Society for Microbiology said this in a release.

"We found a clear reduction of E. coli strains possessing typical genes for extra-intestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC)," said researcher Carmen Bednorz of Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. The reduction was particularly noticeable in strains that adhere to the intestinal mucosa (and less so in the faeces), which was "very interesting," she says, because "ExPEC typically harbour a lot of adhesion genes that promote colonisation of the mucosa.

"Our data suggest that the feeding of probiotics could substitute for antimicrobials as growth promoters," says Bednorz. "This could help to reduce the burden of antimicrobial resistance," she adds.

In the study, Bednorz and her collaborators compared piglets fed with E. faecium to those in a control group. They collected more than 1,400 samples of E. coli from piglets of different ages, and from different parts of the intestine.

The results suggest that E. faecium inhibits pathogenic E. coli from becoming attached to the intestinal mucosa.