Ex-Vivo Adhesion of and to the Intestinal Mucosa of Healthy Beagles.

Some and strains are used as probiotics or feed additives. Adherence to the intestinal mucosa is considered a crucial step for intestinal bacteria to colonize and further interact with the host epithelium and the immune system. In dogs, there are no studies investigating the adhesion of and to paraffin-embedded intestinal mucosa. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the adhesion of and to the intestinal mucosa of six healthy beagles using bacteria derived from dogs and chickens. In addition, we aimed to validate a method to test the adhesion of Alexa Fluor-labeled bacteria to paraffin-embedded canine intestinal mucosa. The results of our study show that both canine- and chicken-derived strains adhered significantly better than to the duodenal mucosa of healthy beagles ( = 0.002). In addition, canine and adhered in higher numbers to canine duodenal mucosa, compared to chicken-derived strains of the same species ( = 0.015 for and = 0.002 for ). The determination of the hydrophobicity of bacteria revealed that canine had the highest hydrophobicity level (36.6%), followed by chicken (20.4%), while canine (5.7%) and chicken (4.5%) had the lowest levels. Our results suggest that both the bacterial species and the host origin of the strain may influence mucosal adhesion.