China Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine ›› 2021, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (2): 726-735.doi: 10.16431/j.cnki.1671-7236.2021.02.035

• Basic Veterinary Medicine • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Antibacterial Activity of Porcine Beta Defensin-2 Against Porcine Extraintestinal Pathogenic Escherichia coli in vivo and in vitro

WANG Antian, HUANG Jing, SUN Yufan, SONG Bingxiao, TAN Chen, HUANG Qi, ZHOU Rui, LI Lu   

  1. The Cooperative Innovation Center for Sustainable Pig Production, College of Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
  • Received:2020-07-09 Online:2021-02-20 Published:2021-02-23

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the antibacterial activity of porcine beta defensin 2 (PBD-2) against porcine extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC) in vivo and in vitro,and provide more insights for evaluating the value of PBD-2 as an antibiotic substitutes.Firstly,the bactericidal activity of different concentrations of PBD-2 against the porcine ExPEC PCN033 was tested in vitro.Subsequently,female Kunming mice aged 5 weeks and weighing between 18-22 g infected with different doses of ExPEC PCN033 were treated with PBD-2 or PBS (n ≥ 5).The survival rate,the bacteria loads of brain,spleen,lung tissue and blood,the levels of inflammatory cytokines IL-6,IL-12,IL-1β and TNF-α and the pathological changes of brain,spleen and lung tissues were observed.The results showed that 25 μg/mL of PBD-2 could extremely significantly inhibit the growth of ExPEC PCN033 in a concentration-dependent manner (P<0.01).The in vivo study revealed that PBD-2 treatment could effectively reduce the mortality rate of mice infected with ExPEC PCN033.The effects of PBD-2 were enhanced with increase of treatment dose of PBD-2.The effects of PBD-2 via intraperitoneal injection and intramuscular injection route were better than that of the oral route.PBD-2 treatment was less effective than chloramphenicol treatment in reducing the mortality of mice.At the same time,PBD-2 treatment extremely significantly reduced the bacteria loads in the brain,spleen,lung tissue and blood of mice at 21 h post infection with ExPEC PCN033 (P<0.01).At the same time,PBD-2 treatment extremely significantly reduced the levels of IL-6,IL-12 and IL-1β of mice at 21 h post infection with PCN033 (P<0.01).PBD-2 treatment also significantly reduced the degree of pathological damages of the brain,lung and spleen tissues of mice at 21 h post infection with ExPEC PCN033.These results indicated that PBD-2 had good activity against porcine ExPEC in vitro,and had therapeutic effect on swine derived ExPEC infection in mice,indicating that PBD-2 had the potential to develop into therapeutic drugs or antibiotic substitutes.

Key words: porcine beta defensin 2 (PBD-2); bacterial infection; treatment; extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC)

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