Faecal testing - what poo says about your pet's health 🐾 The Nutrition Vet

FAECAL TESTING AND TREATMENT – WHAT POO SAYS ABOUT YOUR PET’S HEALTH

I love a photo of poo. It looks and smells so much better than the real thing. By the time I get to see it in the consulting room offered up in a pot or plastic bag the appearance has completely changed, including the colour, consistency and smell. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and for my purposes this is absolutely true.

Don’t underestimate the importance of poo. A healthy gut microbiome is absolutely vital to our pets’ ability to not only survive but to thrive. Eating a healthy, species-appropriate diet, gives your pet and their microbiome the best chance for fabulous gut health, and therefore great healthspan, not just a long lifespan. (After all, who wants to live for years with chronic disease?)

The gut microbiome consists of all the critters that live in the gut: Bacteria, viruses, fungi, Protozoa and more, and there are many trillions of them in every individual. Their health dictates our pets’ health, so we had better treat them right! A healthy, high quality, species-appropriate diet greatly reduces the risk of acquiring not only gut disease, but ALL diseases.

An unhealthy gut does not work properly. Nutrients that should be absorbed may not be and, conversely, components of food that should not be absorbed, plus toxic substances, make their way into the body, all of which results, over time, in inflammation, harmful auto-immune reactions, allergies, intolerances and much, much more.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR PET’S GUT IS HEALTHY? IT’S MORE SUBTLE THAT YOU THINK!

If your pet has what you consider to be a healthy gut please know that they do not have to have vomiting and/or diarrhoea to have a leaky gut. A young animal in particular may not be displaying overt signs of disease but, as with us, symptoms will be more obvious later in their life. Take a moment to look at your pet critically. What is the condition of the fur? How toned are the muscles – flabby or firm? Are they the right body shape and weight? How much dental tartar and gingivitis (gum inflammation) is there? Any wax or redness in and around the ear canals? Are their nails shiny and firm or are they brittle/cracked and snap easily?….Let’s get talking about poo today!

A good part of my consultations involve talking about poo. How else can I assess the gastrointestinal tract? I want to know how often your pet goes, the consistency, the colour, the smell (whether normal or rancid), the size. I want to know if there is a pattern. Does the poo change if the food changes? Which ingredients or food types (kibble, canned, raw, home-made) cause this change?

Detail matters. It’s important to know what worming regimen you use, medications received, which foods were fed while being weaned, the foods, chews, treats and supplements fed since. Other factors affecting your pet’s gut include hunting activities, (especially important in cats), the home environment, (whether rural or urban), and a host of other factors. Who knew that many household sprays, food containers, and types of food bowls for instance can affect the gut? That goes for us too of course.

LOTS can be done to FURTHER assess and help your pet lives it’s best life

Getting down to specifics involves testing the poo. Faeces can be tested for intestinal parasites, infection and, more recently, to identify the number and type of bugs that makeup the individual’s microbiome, those trillions of microorganisms from more than 1000 species.

At a lecture that I attended many years ago an illustrious veterinarian, Penny Watson, from Cambridge university, was discussing an all too common condition called pancreatitis. She posed the idea that the intestinal worms acquired by puppies in the womb from their mother may have an important role to play in the development of the immune system, especially in the context of the cocker spaniel breed. It seems she was most definitely on to something! Research is exploding (pun intended ) in this area and knowledge about it is on a trajectory, enabling more targeted and effective therapies to be developed. Who knew that the gastrointestinal biome of pets with arthritis differs from those without, for instance? A most exciting area of science.

FAECAL TESTS

Worm egg counts

Why test? Some worms can be transmitted to humans, mostly young children and the immunocompromised (think organ transplant recipients, cancer patients and the like), and if in sufficient numbers harm the animal, such as round worms in puppies who acquire a pot bellied appearance and fail to thrive.

The Worm egg count test involves identifying and counting the number of eggs of internal parasites such as roundworms, tapeworms, hookworms, & lungworms. The latest advice from parasitologists is to perform egg counts in addition to, or instead of giving worming products regularly. This is arguably better for both the environment (some of these chemicals harm the water) and the animal, and reduces the incidence of medication resistance, such as is seen quite commonly with farm animals. An increasing number of pet health practioners advise just testing, rather than also giving a worming preparation to avoid disrupting the balance of organisms of the pets gut microbiome. This might prove to be very sound advice indeed as increasing evidence is coming out in support of this approach.

Testing for intestinal worms every 3 months & lungworms every 6 weeks is the current recommendation.

Faecal Antigen testing

These tests are done to identify harmful bacteria, yeasts and viruses in the gut. They have been around for decades and in the future are likely to be superseded by even more sophisticated testing techniques, such as the biome testing that has come about in the last few years. For those interested, more about these bugs and the testing is described below. Otherwise do skip down to the treatment options section that follows.

BACTERIA

Why test? If harmful bacteria outnumber the good bacteria a treatment protocol (food, supplements, faecal microbiome transplant and the like), can be devised that best impacts the specific bacteria causing the problem. In addition, some bacteria may cause harm to people, such as a very select few of the salmonella species in those immunocompromised individuals.

Bacteria can cause disease or help cure it. The devil is in the detail. Bacteria reported to cause disease include – salmonella, campylobacter, clostridium. However, there are at least 2,500 serovars (variants) of salmonella and very few cause disease. Of the Clostridium species Clostridium tetani can be lethal, but Clostridium hiranonis is essential for fat metabolism as it produces secondary bile acids that help to break down fat. Work is yet to be done to prove that this may contribute to pancreatitis, a common condition seen in veterinary clinics in both cats and dogs, but instinctively this seems likely.

VIRUSES

Viruses such as canine coronavirus (NOT the same as the human Covid-19 virus) and parvovirus can cause severe diarrhoea, and in the case of parvovirus, death. This mostly occurs in puppies and young dogs brought up in suboptimal living conditions, puppy farms, for instance. There are rapid tests that can be done in-clinic rather than sending them away to an outside lab. and having to wait for results, which is essential with such a serious disease. Knowing if a virus is the cause of the diarrhoea helps provide the best treatment. Antibiotics do not treat viral disease and can harm the gut microbiome. By far the most effective treatment currently is a faecal microbiome transplant (FMT) where healthy faeces in seeded into the gut via a reverse enema technique. FMT has been used successfully in humans for many years. Thankfully for us we can take a freeze-dried capsule these days! Of course this is highly unlikely to be needed if your pet is fed a high quality species-appropriate diet.

FUNGI

Fungi make up a smaller percentage of the gut microbiome and is the least studied of all the species present. Work is ongoing. Fungal probiotics commonly used for humans such as sacchromyces boulardii have also been studied in dogs and shown to be of benefit for certain disease conditions, notably improved gut health and decreased stress, plus combating bacterial overgrowth from Helicobacter pylori infections. Therefore we can conclude that fungi have a vital role but we are yet to discover more about their benefits and how best to utilise them for treatments.

PROTOZOA – giardia (most common in dogs) & toxoplasma (most common in cats) are common causes of disease in these pet species. Toxoplasma can affect pregnant women so it’s important to know if your cat is unwell due to this parasite. However, as with the bacteria, the devil is in the detail. Professor Tim Spector (Kings College London) founder of the Zoe nutrition programme has established that the protozoan Blastocystis is a beneficial component of human guts, as it helps maintain a healthy BMI (body mass index). As with the fungi there is lack of knowledge about the part the different Protozoa play in their gut of our pets and research is ongoing.

FAECAL MICROBIOME TESTING

Currently this test identifies bacteria only and is in its infancy. The leaders in the field have identified certain important bacteria and their role, but sorting out the roles of all of the more than 1000 species is a Herculean task. The analysis performed currently includes the diversity of species and the number of each species present. They are then separated out into helpful and harmful groups and a dysbiosis index number allocated. This is still a very broad brush approach and there is a long way to go, as can be seen in the study that states, “The expression of bacterial virulence factors may depend on the concentrations of metabolites in the intestinal lumen. For example, the presence of the stress hormone norepinephrine in the gut modifies Salmonella genes to induce enteritis.” This means that in a calm individual who has salmonella in their gut it causes no harm. Stress-based colitis is a common condition of both cats and dogs, therefore I opt to treat not only the gut through appropriate food and supplements, but also tackle any anxiety component that may be contributing to the diarrhoea.

THERE ARE MANY TREATMENT OPTIONS AVAILABLE

The pinnacle to success is a healthy, species-appropriate diet. No buts, no maybes. It is THE key ingredient. During the healing process I make good use of treatments that support both the gut, and the entire body. I use them in a combination that fits each individual’s need on a case by case basis. The supplements include vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, medium chain triglycerides, probiotics, pre-biotics, post biotics, faecal transplants, stem cell therapy and much, much more.

So you see there is a great deal that can be done to have your pet lives their very best life. Let’s start now!

Bibliography and references

Idexx clinical diagnostic faecal Ag testing

https://www.idexx.co.uk/files/09-2690360-00-faecal-dx-clinical-reference-guide-en-uk.pdf

Species level characterisation of the core microbiome in healthy dogs, 2024

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2024.1405470/full

Decoding the microbiome in companion animals, 2024

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/12/9/1831

Comparison of the gut microbiome between healthy and atopic dogs, 2022

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/12/18/2377

The fecal microbiome in dogs with acute diarrhoea and idiopathic IBD, 2012

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051907