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Prophylactic Delivery of a Bacteriophage Cocktail in Feed Significantly Reduces Salmonella Colonization in Pigs

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posted on 2024-10-01, 10:56 authored by Anisha M Thanki, Guillaume Mignard, Robert J Atterbury, Paul Barrow, Andrew D Millard, Martha RJ Clokie
Nontyphoidal Salmonella spp. are a leading cause of human food poisoning and can be transmitted to humans via consuming contaminated pork. To reduce Salmonella spread to the human food chain, bacteriophage (phage) therapy could be used to reduce bacteria from animals’ preslaughter. We aimed to determine if adding a two-phage cocktail to feed reduces Salmonella colonization in piglets. This first required spray drying phages to allow them to be added as a powder to feed, and phages were spray dried in different excipients to establish maximum recovery. Although laboratory phage yields were not maintained during scale up in a commercial spray dryer (titers fell from 3 × 108 to 2.4 × 106 PFU/g respectively), the phage titers were high enough to progress. Spray dried phages survived mixing and pelleting in a commercial feed mill, and sustained no further loss in titer when stored at 4°C or barn conditions over 6 months. Salmonella-challenged piglets that were prophylactically fed the phage-feed diet had significantly reduced Salmonella colonization in different gut compartments (P, 0.01). 16S rRNA gene sequencing of fecal and gut samples showed phages did not negatively impact microbial communities as they were similar between healthy control piglets and those treated with phage. Our study shows delivering dried phages via feed effectively reduces Salmonella colonization in pigs. IMPORTANCE Infections caused by Salmonella spp. cause 93.8 million cases of human food poisoning worldwide, each year of which 11.7% are due to consumption of contaminated pork products. An increasing number of swine infections are caused by multi-drug-resistant (MDR) Salmonella strains, many of which have entered, and continue to enter the human food chain. Antibiotics are losing their efficacy against these MDR strains, and thus antimicrobial alternatives are needed. Phages could be developed as an alternative approach, but research is required to determine the optimal method to deliver phages to pigs and to determine if phage treatment is effective at reducing Salmonella colonization in pigs. The results presented in this study address these two aspects of phage development and show that phages delivered via feed prophylactically to pigs reduces Salmonella colonization in challenged pigs.

Funding

16AGRITECHCAT5: Bacteriophage Management of On-Farm Salmonella Contamination of Vine Fruits

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

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History

Citation

Thanki AM, Mignard G, Atterbury RJ, Barrow P, Millard AD, Clokie MRJ. 2022. Prophylactic Delivery of a Bacteriophage Cocktail in Feed Significantly Reduces Salmonella Colonization in Pigs. Microbiol Spectr 10:e00422-22. https://doi.org/10.1128/spectrum.00422-22

Author affiliation

Department of Genetics and Genome Biology, University of Leicester

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

MICROBIOLOGY SPECTRUM

Volume

10

Issue

3

Pagination

(16)

Publisher

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY

issn

2165-0497

eissn

2165-0497

Acceptance date

2022-04-13

Copyright date

2022

Available date

2024-10-01

Notes

Appears to be OA despite Unpaywall result. On journal website it states (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Editors

Pride DT

Spatial coverage

United States

Language

English

Data Access Statement

All Sequence files and metadata used in the present study were deposited to the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under the Bioproject accession PRJNA799037.

Rights Retention Statement

  • No

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