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This chapter provides an overview of germfree (GF), gnotobiotic (GN), and defined flora (DF) laboratory rats, relating their history, traditional and modern derivation procedures, the anatomy and physiology, and their use in the study of mammalian host–microbiome relationships. Extensive literature on the nutrition and physiology of GF rats and the expanding library of immunological reagents have increased the research utility of GF, GN, or DF rats. Such rats have been extensively used in metabolic experiments as nucleus seed stocks for the production of disease-free animals and as tools for infectious disease studies, among others. The chapter also presents research applications of GF rats that are particularly suitable for testing candidate viral carcinogens since they are uniquely free of all known viruses, for pathology studies in the distinguishing of primary mediation lesions from those associated with infections, and the study of the biological effects of radiation.

No abstract available, Scandinavian Journal of Laboratory Animal Sciences, Vol. 23 No. 2 (1996)

Irritable bowel syndrome is a chronic gastrointestinal disorder characterized by abdominal pain and altered bowel habits in the absence of organic disease. We present 2 cases where diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome occurred in association with earlier intestinal infection or antibiotic treatment. Both were successfully treated with instillation of an anaerobic cultivated human intestinal microbiota. Thereafter, they were symptom free for at least 12 months. We now introduce the term dysbiotic bowel syndrome covering cases where a disturbed intestinal microbiota is assumed to be present. We recommend that restoration of the dysbiotic gut microbiota should be first-line treatment in these conditions.

This study defined a model for biotherapeutic eradication of beta-haemolytic streptococci, group G, in a rat breeding unit (3100 rats) by use of a strain of Lactobacillus reuteri. The microbe was added to the rats’ drinking water and the genitals of all rats were swabbed three times with a solution of the microbe. After this procedure undesirable streptococci were not recognized in any animal of this breeding farm., Scandinavian Journal of Laboratory Animal Sciences, Vol 35, No 3 (2008)

The gastrointestinal tract of all animals is colonized with a vast, complex and dynamic consortium of microorganisms. In spite of recent progress in molecular microbiology, this complexity makes a proper qualitative and quantitative evaluation difficult and expensive to perform. In the present review we discuss the results obtained from applying a functional concept for studying intestinal host/microbial interactions in eight mammalian species and two species of fish. We show that microbial interactions with endogenous derived substrates such as cholesterol, bilirubin, mucin and trypsin occur in all species. Exogenous compounds (e.g. carbohydrate, protein, fibre) are also acted upon by the intestinal microflora. From an evolutionary point of view, dietary differences have led to a compartmentalized variability in microbial functions. Taken together, the results in this review underscore the importance of understanding precisely how gastrointestinal metabolism serves to establish a symbiotic cross-talk between animals and their gastrointestinal flora. Key words: mammals, fish, microfloraassociated characteristics, short-chain fatty acids, cholesterol.