Low-dosage antibiotic intake can disturb gut microbiota in mice

Abstract

The proportion of different microbial populations in gut microbiota (GM) is an important factor that in recent years has been linked to obesity and numerous metabolic diseases. Antibiotics are one of the factors that can dramatically alter GM at therapeutic dosages, but their effects at subtherapeutic doses have been less investigated. Here, amouse model using a total of 60 C57BL/6J mice was used to compare the evolution of totalmicrobiota, four phyla and two genera considered as probiotics in controlmice, and mice exposed to 50 μg/kg of ampicillin, 100 μg/kg of tetracycline or 100 μg/kg of sulphadiazine. The results obtained found that the presence of antibiotics in foods, even at trace concentrations, can disturb mouse GM, causing in all antibiotics significant increases of Proteobacteria (about 2 log CFU/g) or decreases of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus (about 1 log CFU/g) for the cases of ampicillin and sulphadiazine.