Characterization of fecal microbiota of diabetic dogs

Abstract

The intestinal microbiota has the ability to affect host physiology through both intra- and extra-intestinal modifications and changes in it are being associated with metabolic diseases such as diabetes mellitus type I in humans and animals. Much is known today about the intestinal microbiota of healthy animals; however, studies characterizing the microbiota of diseased animals are rare. Thus, this study aims to characterize the fecal microbiota of diabetic dogs submitted to a standard diet of glycemic control and to verify possible differences between the microbiota of non - diabetic dogs and that of diabetic dogs submitted to the same diet. For this, 14 clinically controlled diabetic dogs from the clinic routine of the FMVZ - USP Veterinary Hospital and 8 non - diabetic animals belonging to the permanent colony of the Laboratory of Nutrition and Nutrition Diseases of Dogs and Cats of the FCAV - Unesp were selected. The animals were fed for 60 days with the same diet, formulated in a way that had characteristics similar to those for glycemic control available in the market. At the end of this period, samples of fresh feces were collected at a single moment to determine the composition of the microbiota. The sequencing will be performed by the MiSeq Illumina method. The data will be evaluated for the assumption of normality of the errors and submitted to analysis of variance by the SAS GLM procedure and comparisons will be conducted by the Tukey Test. A significance of 5% will be considered for all tests.