Metabolic Fingerprinting of Feces from Calves, Subjected to Gram-Negative Bacterial Endotoxin

Gram-negative bacteria have a well-known impact on the disease state of neonatal calves and their mortality. This study was the first to implement untargeted metabolomics on calves’ fecal samples to unravel the effect of Gram-negative bacterial endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS). In this context, calves were challenged with LPS and administered with fish oil, nanocurcumin, or dexamethasone to evaluate treatment effects. Ultra-high-performance liquid-chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) was employed to map fecal metabolic fingerprints from the various groups before and after LPS challenge. Based on the generated fingerprints, including 9650 unique feature ions, significant separation according to LPS group was achieved through orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (Q(2) of 0.57 and p-value of 0.022), which allowed the selection of 37 metabolites as bacterial endotoxin markers. Tentative identification of these markers suggested that the majority belonged to the subclass of the carboxylic acid derivatives—amino acids, peptides, and analogs—and fatty amides, with these subclasses playing a role in the metabolism of steroids, histidine, glutamate, and folate. Biological interpretations supported the revealed markers’ potential to aid in disease diagnosis, whereas beneficial effects were observed following dexamethasone, fish oil, and nanocurcumin treatment.