Prevention of mastitis in multiparous dairy cows with a previous history of mastitis by oral feeding with probiotic <scp><i>Bacillus subtilis</i></scp>
Megumi Urakawa, Tao Zhuang, Hidetoshi Sato, Satoru Takanashi, Kozue Yoshimura, Yuma Endo, Teppei Katsura, Tsuyoshi Umino, Koutaro Tanaka, Hitoshi Watanabe, Hiroko Kobayashi, N. Takada, Tomoyuki Kozutsumi, Hiroaki Kumagai, Takafumi Asano, Kohko Sazawa, Nobuhisa Ashida, Guoqi Zhao, Michael T. Rose, Haruki Kitazawa, Hitoshi Shirakawa, Kouichi Watanabe, Tomonori Nochi, Takehiko Nakamura, Hisashi Aso
Abstract
Abstract Mastitis is a very common inflammatory disease of the mammary gland of dairy cows, resulting in a reduction of milk production and quality. Probiotics may serve as an alternative to antibiotics to prevent mastitis, and the use of probiotics in this way may lessen the risk of antibiotic resistant bacteria developing. We investigated the effect of oral feeding of probiotic Bacillus subtilis (BS) C‐3102 strain on the onset of mastitis in dairy cows with a previous history of mastitis. BS feeding significantly decreased the incidence of mastitis, the average number of medication days and the average number of days when milk was discarded, and maintained the mean SCC in milk at a level substantially lower than the control group. BS feeding was associated with lower levels of cortisol and TBARS and increased the proportion of CD4 + T cells and CD11c + CD172a high dendritic cells in the blood by flow cytometry analysis. Parturition increased the migrating frequency of granulocytes toward a milk chemoattractant cyclophilin A in the control cows, however, this was reduced by BS feeding, possibly indicating a decreased sensitivity of peripheral granulocytes to cyclophilin A. These results reveal that B. subtilis C‐3102 has potential as a probiotic and has preventative capacity against mastitis in dairy cows.