The impact of probiotics and lactoferrin supplementation on piglet gastrointestinal microbial communities

Probiotics and lactoferrin are currently being used in neonatal intensive care units in the hopes of reducing rates of sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). While studies have shown that these measures can be clinically beneficial to premature babies, and there are ongoing trials to measure their impact on NEC and sepsis rates, little is known about how they may impact microbiota development. We thus employed a newborn piglet model to assess the impact of feeding probiotics or a combination of probiotics and lactoferrin on development of the gastrointestinal microbiota. Healthy full-term piglets were fed either probiotics alone or probiotics and a bovine lactoferrin supplement over the first weeks of life, and their microbiota profiles were compared with unsupplemented controls. We found that both probiotic and probiotic plus lactoferrin treatments impacted the microbial composition within the gastrointestinal tract, with differing impacts on various regions within the gut. In addition, the impact of probiotics was often reversed by the presence of lactoferrin and both feeding interventions altered the microbiota’s genetic propensity to use ferric versus ferrous ions. These results suggest that iron availability may be a key factor to consider when designing feeding interventions that target the microbiome.