The impact of probiotic Clostridium butyricum MIYAIRI 588 on murine gut metabolic alterations

Introduction: Clostridium butyricum MIYAIRI 588 (CBM 588) is a probiotic bacterium used in antidiarrheal medicine in Japan. A few studies analyzed the changes in gut microbiome in patients treated with antimicrobials based on metagenomics sequencing. However, the impact of CBM 588 on gut metabolic alterations has not been fully elucidated. This study was to reveal the impact of CBM 588 on gut metabolic alterations.

Material and methods: In this in vivo study, mice were divided into four groups and CBM 588, clindamycin (CLDM), and normal saline (control) was orally administered (1. CLDM, 2. CBM 588, 3. CBM 588 + CLDM, 4. water) for 4 days. Fecal samples were collected to extract DNA for metagenomics analysis. Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Unobserved States (PICRUSt) was used to obtain relative Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway abundance information derived from metagenomics data.

Results: CLDM treatment resulted in a dramatic increase in Firmicutes phylum compared to non-CLDM-treated groups (control and CBM 588-treated group). Then, the CBM 588 + CLDM-treated group showed a trend similar in many metabolic pathways to the CLDM-treated group. On the other hand, the CBM 588 + CLDM-treated group showed higher relative abundance compared to the CLDM-treated group especially in starch and sucrose metabolism.

Discussion: We concluded that CBM 588 caused a gut microbiome functional shift toward increased carbohydrate metabolism. These results support the hypothesis that CBM 588 treatment modulates gut microbiome under dysbiosis conditions due to antimicrobials.