By Dr. James Chen, DVM, DACVN — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board A veterinarian reassures a dog during a clinic visit. The canine supplement market is projected to exceed four billion dollars within a few years, and it’s almost entirely self-policed. Unlike drugs, supplements don’t require pre-market proof of efficacy; a product can…
By Dr. James Chen, DVM, DACVN — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board Zesty Paws Vet Strength canine probiotic — one of the brands audited. Of the five criteria we use to judge a canine supplement, the fifth — full dose transparency — is the easiest for an owner to check and the one…
By Dr. James Chen, DVM, DACVN — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board High-magnification micrograph of a microorganism. The single most persuasive number on a probiotic label is also the most misleading: the CFU count. “30 billion live cultures” sounds like a clinical guarantee, but it’s a count taken at the factory gate. Between…
If the gut microbiome is an organ, the short-chain fatty acids are among its most important hormones. Produced when commensal bacteria ferment dietary fiber in the colon, acetate, propionate, and butyrate are far more than metabolic waste — they’re signaling molecules that shape intestinal barrier function, immune tone, and even systemic metabolism. For a veterinary…
The idea that the gut influences the mind is old; the mechanisms by which it does so are newly, and rapidly, being worked out. The gut-brain axis describes the continuous, bidirectional communication between the gastrointestinal tract — including its trillions of resident microorganisms — and the central nervous system. What began as a curiosity has…
The premise sounds counterintuitive: that a dead bacterium might do what a live one can’t. Yet the science of heat-killed, or tyndallized, lactobacilli is one of the more compelling chapters in the postbiotic story. The immune system doesn’t, in fact, require a microorganism to be alive to recognize it. It recognizes molecular patterns — and…
Fecal microbiota transplantation — the transfer of a processed fecal preparation from a healthy donor into a recipient’s gastrointestinal tract — is among the most direct expressions of the microbiome-as-therapeutic-target idea. Where dysbiosis is the problem, the reasoning goes, replacing the disrupted community with a healthy one might be the solution. In human medicine, FMT…
Of all the claimed benefits of postbiotics, immune modulation is the most mechanistically grounded — and the one most in need of careful translation from bench to bedside. The immune system’s job is to detect microbes, and it does so by recognizing conserved molecular patterns, not by assessing whether a microbe is alive. This simple…