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News Notes
Can Probiotics Help Protect Against Gastric Ulcers?
By Adam Marcus
Fermented rice may not sound appealing, but Japanese researchers say the product could be an effective treatment for gastric ulcers in horses.
Horses with ulcers that were fed an extract of fermented rice for a month experienced significant improvement in the lesions compared with animals given tap water, the researchers reported.
For the study, researchers at Yamaguchi University and their colleagues tested the effects of the rice extract in 17 horses with gastric ulcers that had been confirmed by endoscopy. Of the animals, 8 received the extract orally once a day at a dose of 0.2 mL/kg, and 9 received plain tap water.
After 1 month, the animals again underwent endoscopy, and their gastric lesions were assessed for signs of change. Among the untreated horses, the ulcers
did not appear to resolve from their baseline severity. But in the horses that received the rice extract, the ulcers shrank substantially, from a score of 4 at baseline to 1 after treatment, the researchers reported.
“In this study, the administration of a rice fermented extract improved gastric mucosal lesions in horses with gastric ulcers. This may be because the rice fermented extract improved the healing of gastric mucosal epithelial cells,” according to the researchers, who published their findings in the Journal of Equine Science. “Thus, a rice fermented extract, which is stable when boiled, might be a novel alternative anti-ulcer agent that protects cells and improves wound restoration through vanilloid receptor-mediated neural systems, synthesis of prostaglandins, induction of heat shock proteins, and suppression of gastric acid [secretion],” they added.
For more information:
Sasaki N, et al. Effect of a novel rice fermented extract on gastric ulcers in horses. J Equine Sci. 2021;32(2):27-30. doi: 10.1294/jes.32.27. Epub 2021 Jun 18. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jes/32/2/32_2101/_pdf/-char/en