Phytosphingosine alleviates Staphylococcus aureus-induced mastitis by inhibiting inflammatory responses and improving the blood-milk barrier in mice.

Mastitis is one of the common diseases in dairy cows which threatens the health of cows and impacts on economic benefits seriously. Recent studies have been showed that Subacute Ruminal Acidosis (SARA) increased the susceptibility of cow mastitis. SARA leads the disturbance of the rumen microbiota, and the rumen bacterial disordered community is an important endogenous factor of cow mastitis. That is to say, cows which suffer from SARA have a disordered rumen microbiota, a prolonged decline in ruminal PH and a high level of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in the rumen, blood. Therefore, ruminal metabolism is closely related to the rumen microbiota. However, the specific mechanism of SARA and mastitis still not clear. We found an intestinal metabolite according to the metabonomics, which is correlated to inflammation. Phytophingosine (PS), a product from rumen fluid and milk of the cows which suffer from SARA and mastitis. It has the effect of killing bacteria and anti-inflammatory. Emerging evidences indicate that PS can alleviate inflammatory diseases. However, how PS affects mastitis is largely unknown. In this study, we explored the concrete role of PS on Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) -induced mastitis in mice. We found that PS obviously decreased the level of the proinflammatory cytokines. Meanwhile, PS also significantly relieved the mammary gland inflammation caused by S. aureus and restored the function of the blood-milk barrier. Here, we showed that PS increased the expression of the classic Tight-junctions (TJs) proteins including ZO-1, Occludin and Claudin-3. Moreover, PS improves S. aureus-induced mastitis by inhibiting the activation of the NF-κB and NLRP3 signaling pathways. These data indicated that PS relieved S. aureus-induced mastitis effectively. This also provides a reference for exploring the correlation between the intestinal metabolism and inflammation.