Does Curcumin Have a Role in the Interaction between Gut Microbiota and in Mice?

There is strong correlation between changes in abundance of specific bacterial species and several diseases including schistosomiasis. Several studies have described therapeutic effects of curcumin (CUR) which may arise from its regulative effects on intestinal microbiota. Thus, we examined the impact of CUR on the diversity of intestinal microbiota with/without infection by cercariae for 56 days. Enterobacteriaceae was dominating in a naive and infected mice group without CUR treatment, the most predominant species was with relative density (R.D%) = 80.66% and the least one was . (0.52%). The influence of CUR on murine microbiota composition was examined one week after oral administration of high (40) and low (20 mg/kg b.w.) CUR doses were administered three times, with two day intervals. CUR induced high variation in the Enterobacteriaceae family, characterized by a significant ( < 0.001) reduction in and asignificant ( < 0.001) increase in in both naïve and -infected mice, compared to untreated mice, in a dose-dependent manner. Additionally, our study showed the effects of high CUR doses on infection immunological and parasitological parameters. These data support CUR's ability to promote known to produce schistosomicidal toxins and offset the sequelae of murine schistosomiasis.