Effect of Fermented Traditional Chinese Prescription With Lactobacillus Plantarum on Dysbacteriotic Diarrhea Mice Induced by Ceftriaxone Sodium

Abstract

Background: Buzhongyiqi decoction (B), Sijunzi decoction (S), and Shenlingbaizhu decoction (SH) have been extensively clinically used for the treatment of health status and diseases caused by spleen-qi deficiency for many years and microbial fermentation has been widely applied in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for thousands of years in China. This study was aimed to investigate the mitigative effect of TCM and fermented TCM (FTCM) with Lactobacillus plantarum (LP) in antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD), and identify the compounds of S and Fermented S (FS). Methods: The dysbacteriotic diarrhea mice induced by ceftriaxone sodium (CS) were treated with LP, B, S, SH, Fermented B, S, and SH. The diarrhea indexes, the abundance of some gut bacteria, intestinal morphometrics, and the mRNA expressions related to intestinal barrier function were assessed at multilevels. In addition, S and FS were chosen to identify and relatively quantify the compounds by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-TOF/MS), and different expressed compounds were analysed. Results: Results showed that CS significantly increased the fecal output weight, the total number of fecal output, and fecal water content, indicating the occurrence of diarrhea, while TCM, LP, and FTCM alleviated the diarrhea to different degrees and FTCM showed more sustained effects. Then, bacterial culture test showed above symptoms were accompanied with the disruption of some intestinal flora. Meanwhile, the diarrhea mice showed abnormal intestinal morphology and destroyed intestinal barrier manifested as reduced mRNA expression of Aquaporins (AQPs) and tight junction (TJ) protein. Notably, the above indices were alleviated in other treatments mice.Conclusions: All these findings imply that the intestinal side effects caused by antibiotics can be alleviated by TCM, LP, and fermented TCM through regulating the intestinal flora and barrier function, which provides an idea of further development and application of them in the clinical use of antibiotics.