The use of a multi-strain probiotic and high dietary vitamin D to ameliorate acute TNBS-induced colitis in mice
Authors: López-Carrasquillo Jonathan , Cruz Myrella , Appleyard Caroline 
Published: May 2023

Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) either Crohn’s disease or Ulcerative colitis are debilitating disorders that affect the gastrointestinal tract with chronic inflammation. Patients with IBD are often characterized by having a change in the gut microbiome composition and decreased levels of vitamin D, which contribute to disease development. Because of this, the separate use of probiotics and vitamin D has gained attention as complementary treatments. However, the beneficial effects of combining these treatments to target colitis inflammation by modulating gut microbiome and immune cells are still unknown. Therefore, the objective of this research was to demonstrate the efficacy of probiotics and high dietary vitamin D to ameliorate colonic inflammation. We hypothesized that co-administration of probiotics and vitamin D will synergistically reduce colitis induced inflammation. For the methodology, male and female C57bl/6 mice were divided into 4 groups: Colitis (n=6), Colitis + Probiotic (n=6), Colitis +Vitamin D (n=6), Colitis + Probiotic + Vitamin D (n=6). Animals received 7 days of pretreatment with Vivomixx probiotic in drinking water, high vitamin D (5IU/g) in food, or both treatments combined. At day 7, animals were lightly anesthetized with ether and colitis induction was done by intracolonic administration of 0.1mL of 4mg trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid in 30% ethanol. Water, food, and body weight were monitored daily. Animals were sacrificed 3 days post colitis induction and colonic tissue was collected to assess colonic inflammation by macroscopic score, colon length, and myeloperoxidase activity (MPO). Results obtained indicate that animals had similar food and water consumption during the 7 days pretreatment of probiotic and vitamin D.After 48 hours of colitis induction, all animals lost an average of 15% of their weight. At day of sacrifice, colitis untreated animals continued to lose weight, while administration of probiotic and probiotic +Vitamin D significantly recovered body weight (7.55%, p<0.05 and 9.55%, p<0.01, respectively) compared to colitis untreated. Similarly, animals treated with probiotic (4.11, p=0.0017) and probiotic + Vitamin D (4.02, p=0.0012) had significantly decreased macroscopic damage score compared to colitis (10.9). Treatment with vitamin D alone did not improve weight loss or macroscopic score. In conclusion, results obtained indicate that probiotic administration may be responsible for colitis recovery by decreasing weight loss and colonic inflammation. Future studies will increase the number of animals to determine if synergistic effects occur between probiotic and vitamin D to ameliorate colitis by modulating the gut microbiome and increasing anti-inflammatory cytokines. Supported in part by 5R25GM082406 and 1T32GM144896 This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.