Melatonin and its-Remodeled Fecal Microbiota Improve Gut Health Through Inhibiting Oxidative Stress, Autophagy and Inflammation

Abstract Background Gut health is involved in the nutrition absorption, reproduction and lactation in antenatal, perinatal and early weaned mammals. Recent literatures have demonstrated that melatonin functions in aging, cancer and obesity, but to date, few investigations toward exploring whether melatonin-reprogrammed fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) and foster care (FC) affect gut health have been performed. Results Here, compared with the control group, melatonin and FMT increased intestinal villus height/crypt depth (V/C), inhibited gut oxidative stress, autophagy and inflammation in antenatal and perinatal rats. Likewise, not only melatonin and FMT, but also FC enhanced intestinal V/C through above parallel ways with decreasing intestinal permeability in early weaned rats. Mechanically, melatonin directly strengthened antioxidation, attenuated autophagy and apoptosis in H2O2-induced IEC6 intestinal epithelial cells. Furthermore, melatonin, FMT and FC reprogrammed intestinal microbiota in which more beneficial microbiota, including Allobaculum, Bifidobacterium and Faecalibaculum produced more metabolic short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) including acetic acid and butyric acid to protect gut health. Most interestingly, compared with the control group, early weaned rats may get above probiotics via eating or licking the dung of the co-cage rats treated with melatonin in the FC group. Conclusions Overall, melatonin, FMT and FC improved gut health and the potential regulatory mechanism was associated with strengthening antioxidation, suppressing autophagy, inflammatory and apoptosis, as well as producing more SCFAs from reprogrammed gut microbiota. These findings suggest that melatonin, FMT and FC may be novel and effective methods to ameliorate gut health in antenatal, perinatal and weaned mammals.