Data from: Use of intrauterine dextrose as an alternative to systemic antibiotics for treatment of clinical metritis in dairy cattle: a microbiome perspective

<p dir="ltr">This data set represents longitudinal sampling of vaginal discharge in a population of cows treated with either intrauterine dextrose or a conventional antibiotic treatment. The raw data are sequencing reads after 16S rRNA sequencing was performed on bacterial DNA extracted from the vaginal discharge samples to see if there are similar impacts on the microbiome between a conventional antibiotic treatment as compared to an antibiotic alternative treatment. The sampling scheme is as follows: Cows from a central Pennsylvania dairy were screened for clinical metritis (CM) at 7±3 days in milk (DIM) using a Metricheck™ device. Cows with red-brown watery discharge were diagnosed with CM and eligible for enrollment in the study. Eligible cows were blocked by parity and randomly allocated to one of two treatments starting on the day of diagnosis: 1) Intrauterine dextrose: one liter of an intrauterine 50% dextrose solution for three days, and 2) Systemic ceftiofur: two injections of ceftiofur (6.6 mg/Kg of BW; Excede, Zoetis Inc.) 72 hours apart. Cows were evaluated for clinical cure rate at 7±3 and 14±3 days post-diagnosis. Vaginal discharge samples were collected using the Metricheck™ at enrollment day (study day (sd) 0, pre-treatment), sd 7, and sd 14 for a subset of enrolled cows (DEX=13, CONV=14). Vaginal discharge samples were analyzed with 16S rRNA sequencing to evaluate changes in the reproductive microbiome between treatments.</p>