What the microbiome means for pet health

Microbiome science is being explored by researchers and addressed by Hill’s Pet Nutrition in some new and enhanced prescription diet and science diet products including those introduced at the 2025 Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX), presented by the North American Veterinary Community, in Orlando, Florida. In an interview with dvm360 at VMX, Karen Shenoy, DVM, chief veterinary officer for Hill’s US, discussed the importance of a healthy microbiome and the work being done to study more about how it affects pets and how that knowledge can be applied to their diets.

The following is a transcript of the video:

Karen Shenoy, DVM: The microbiome is a collection of microbes and all kinds of different organisms that are throughout our body. We actually talk the most about the gut microbiome, and you hear about how what's in your gut and how the different microorganisms that live there can affect you system-wide. It can affect all kinds of different organ systems, and is really important in health and disease that we're thinking about keeping the gut microbiome, not just ourselves, but our microbes that live within us and within our pets good and healthy.

The microbiome is so important as we think about new ways that we may be able to help manage pets or keep them healthy. And Hill’s has been looking into the microbiome and doing a ton of research in that space for more than a decade. We're actually really proud of a partnership we have with the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and through that, we're not only sharing knowledge and innovating and thinking about how we can help pets, but actually sharing the information both that that school has, that we have around the microbiome in a public way through this one health microbiome resource, so that we can help get data out there, make sure that we're able to help support both pet and human health, and all the advances that can happen within the microbiome space.