[Bacterial colonization of the rat jejunum in long-term nutrition with an elemental diet]

Elemental diets and peptide diets are increasingly used in the treatment of enteral diseases and as alternatives to parenteral nutrition. Though multiple influences of these diets on the small intestinal bacteria seem possible no long-term studies were hitherto carried out to clarify their actions on the intestinal flora. Therefore, the jejunal flora was assessed qualitatively and quantitatively in a group of rats fed an elemental diet over a period of 60 days and a control group receiving standard pellet food. In both sets of animals similar numbers of colony forming bacteria/ml jejunal juice of the aerobic and anaerobic growing flora were observed. In parallel, the individual genera did not exhibit significant differences in control and experimental animals. According to these findings long-term feeding of a peptide diet to rats does not influence the small intestinal flora.