Short-term feeding of defatted bovine colostrum mitigates inflammation in the gut via changes in metabolites and microbiota in a chicken animal model

The causes of inflammation in the gut change by location according to the local digesta composition and lumen environmental conditions that further affect microbial diversity. Bovine colostrum (BC) contains a rich matrix of compounds with referenced beneficial effects in gut physiology in general but to date no comprehensive assessment of what changes in gut metabolites and bacteria might occur with consumption of BC that specifically and repeatedly could impact inflammation status in the small intestine. To this point, we employed a novel chicken animal model highly sensitive to even mild inflammatory stimuli and compared feeding a standard feed (Con) to the effects of Con supplemented with BC or nonfat dry milk (NFDM) for any changes in ileal nitro-oxidative inflammation status, efficiency of nutrient use, ileal morphology, metabolites, and the composition of the microbiota. Uniquely, the BC-supplemented diet was associated with a rapid improved efficiency of nutrient use consistent with the observed increased ileum absorptive surface. The defatted BC reduced epithelial cell tyrosine-nitrated protein (NTp, biomarker of nitrooxidative inflammatory stress) content by 37% compared to Con or NFDM. Metabolome analysis revealed that related metabolites, metabolite precursors and conjugates in a pathway group, were superior to individual molecules in predicting the extent to which BC-associated effects mitigated NTp. Anti-inflammatory/anti-NTp metabolites were significantly greater in abundance in the digesta of BC fed animals. Consistent with the present concepts of gut eubiosis, BC affected the composition and structure of the gut microbiota, particularly as regards the greater abundance of immunomodulating segmented filamentous bacteria (SFB, Candidatus Arthromitus) specific to ileal epithelial scrapings. Overall, the data suggest that BC established an anti-inflammatory environment in the ileum through increased content of defined groups of anti-inflammatory metabolites coincident with beneficial alterations in the microbiota.