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Probiotics as a tool for disease mitigation in wildlife: insights from food production and medicine
Author(s) -
McKenzie Valerie J.,
Kueneman Jordan G.,
Harris Reid N.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/nyas.13617
Subject(s) - wildlife , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , microbiology and biotechnology , probiotic , aquaculture , agriculture , intensive care medicine , business , medicine , biology , ecology , fish <actinopterygii> , fishery , genetics , pathology , bacteria
The use of beneficial microbes to improve host attributes, referred to as probiotic therapy , has been increasingly applied to industries, including aquaculture, agriculture, and human medicine, and is emerging in the field of wildlife medicine. However, there is a general lack of shared knowledge regarding successful practices as well as ecological processes that underlie host–microbe interactions. Presently, probiotics are being developed specifically for preventing and treating particular infectious diseases as an alternative to antibiotic treatments and chemotherapy. We review research on probiotics developed for mitigation of infectious disease in the aforementioned industries to gain insight into how probiotics may be effective in reducing wildlife disease risk. We examine the trends of successful in vivo probiotic applications for disease systems and identify common objectives to reduce intestinal pathogens and sexually transmitted and respiratory diseases, inhibit skin pathogens, and serve as environmental prophylaxis to reduce pathogen loads in the environment. We conclude by highlighting the frontier of wildlife probiotics research and identifying knowledge gaps where research is needed.