El tratamiento por aerosol con bacteriófagos y exclusión competitiva reduce la infección con Salmonella Enteritidis en pollos

A combination of three different Salmonella-specific bacteriophages (BPs) and one competitive exclusion (CE) product were used to reduce Salmonella Enteritidis (SE) colonization in experimentally infected chickens. Equal numbers of 7-day-old chickens were used in each of three groups: a CE group (treated with CE), a BP group (treated with BP), and a CE-plus-BP group (treated with both products). The CE product was administered via coarse spray at 1 day of age and the cocktail of three BPs was given via spray at 6 days of age using a multiplicity of infection of 10³ plaque-forming units. All the experimental groups, except a healthy control group, were challenged orally with 2.95 × 10⁵ colony-forming units (CFU)/ml of an SE strain at 7 days of age. Seven days postchallenge, the chickens were euthanatized for individual SE detection, quantitative bacteriology, and phage isolation from ceca and an internal organ pool. The qualitative bacteriology demonstrated that the use of the CE product diminished the incidence of SE to 75.7% and the mixture of BPs reduced it to 80%; when CE plus BP were used, the incidence dropped significantly to 38.7% (P < 0.0001), as compared with the infection control group (100%). A significant difference in the incidence was observed between the CE and the CE-plus-BP groups, and the BP and the CE-plus-BP groups (P = 0.0027 and P = 0.0010, respectively). The mean SE cecal count diminished with the use of CE plus BP (1.6 × 10² CFU/g, P 5 0.0003) compared with the control group (1.56 × 10⁵ CFU/g), the CE group (4.23 × 10³ CFU/g), and the BP group (9.48 × 10³ CFU/g). On the basis of the present study, it may be concluded that the use of both types of biocontrollers can be an effective method for reducing SE colonization in commercial chickens, but further basic and applied research is needed.