pig gut metagenome Metagenome

Cystoisospora suis causes diarrhea, exsiccosis and reduced weight gain in suckling piglets. Cystoisosporosis is effectively controlled by the use of toltrazuril. However, the consequences of toltrazuril on the development of the microbiota composition in the piglet gut has been hardly reported so far. This study aimed to evaluate alterations in the gut microbiota of C. suis infected piglets in response to treatment with toltrazuril during the suckling and early postweaning phase. Piglets were infected with C. suis on the first day of life. Except the control group (n=12), piglets received either parenteral or oral toltrazuril (n = 13/treatment group). Fecal samples were collected on days 1, 3, 5, 11, 15, 31, 34 and 38 day of life for microbiota analysis using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing (V3-V4 region) on an Illumina MiSeq platform. Host gene expression was performed using RT-qPCR. Bioinformatics were performed using the DADA2, phyloseq and vegan packages in R.