Freeze-dried fecal microorganisms as an effective biomaterial for the treatment of calves suffering from diarrhea.

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is a therapeutic modality for treating neonatal calf diarrhea. Several practical barriers, including donor selection, fecal collection, and a limited timeframe for FMT, are the main constraints to using fresh feces for implementing on-farm FMT. We report the utility of FMT with pretreated ready-to-use frozen (F) or freeze-dried (FD) microorganisms for treating calf diarrhea.

Development of a rational framework for the therapeutic efficacy of fecal microbiota transplantation for calf diarrhea treatment.

Background: Establishing fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) to prevent multifactorial diarrhea in calves is challenging because of the differences in farm management practices, the lack of optimal donors, and recipient selection. In this study, the underlying factors of successful and unsuccessful FMT treatment cases are elucidated, and the potential markers for predicting successful FMT are identified using fecal metagenomics via 16S rRNA gene sequencing, fecal metabolomics via capillary electrophoresis time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and machine learning approaches.

Results: Specifically, 20 FMT treatment cases, in which feces from healthy donors were intrarectally transferred into recipient diarrheal calves, were conducted with a success rate of 70%.