Metabolic profile of caecal micro-organisms from rats fed indigestible plant cell-wall components.

A fibre-free diet, or the same diet supplemented with 100 g cabbage or carrot cell-wall preparation/kg, was fed to rats for 28 days and the activities of a number of caecal microbial enzymes (azoreductase, aryl nitroreductase, beta-glucosidase, beta-glucuronidase, imidazole nitroreductase and nitrite reductase) were determined in vitro. The plant cell-wall preparations diluted the gut contents and decreased the number of bacteria per gram of caecal contents. Enzyme activities per gram of caecal contents were also decreased, with the exception of beta-glucosidase activity which was significantly increased. These plant cell-wall preparations also increased caecal size, and thereby significantly increased total activity per caecum of microbial azoreductase, aryl nitroreductase, beta-glucosidase and beta-glucuronidase. When bacterial metabolism was expressed per 10(9) bacteria, all enzyme activities were significantly increased in caecal samples from rats fed the plant cell-wall preparations. There was an overall concordance of 0.91 between all the enzymes when expressed per 10(9) bacteria, but of only 0.38 when enzyme activities were expressed per gram of caecal contents.