Rebuilding the GI barrier

Robin A Saar, RVT, VTS (Nutrition) recently coauthored the Small Animal Microbiomes and Nutrition textbook with Sarah Dodd, BVSc, MSc, PhD, DECVCN. A senior scientific communication technician, she also presented several continuing education sessions at the 2024 American Veterinary Medical Association Convention in Austin, Texas.

In an interview with dvm360 at the AVMA convention, Saar discussed the GI barrier and how it can be rebuilt. Methods include alternative therapies such as fecal microbiota transplant.

The following is a transcript of the video:

Robin A Saar, RVT, VTS (Nutrition): So, if we're looking to try to rebuild our GI barrier, it really is important, of course, that we have good nutrition. We want to look at highly digestible nutrients. We want those nutrients to be a proper balance for that species, so if it's a carnivore or an omnivore. We want to make sure they're coming from the proper proportions, including for the life stage of that pet. We also can start thinking about alternative therapies. We call them alternative therapies, but they really are becoming now more common therapies that we know can help rebalance.

Fecal microbiota transplant, or FMT, is taking feces from a normal, healthy, functioning adult animal, and putting that into a same species animal that is having a dysfunction, [such as] a GI upset or disease. In other sense, the goal of that [therapy] is to put in normal, functioning bacteria and other microbes, and the chemicals or metabolites they make, to help rebuild that barrier back to normal. That will work by feeding the enterocytes, the colonocytes that are there… so that they can produce mucus and help rebuild that barrier.