Isolation, characterization, and assessment of lactic acid bacteria toward their selection as poultry probiotics

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Background</jats:title> <jats:p>Probiotics are live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host, are now accepted as suitable alternatives to antibiotics in the control of animal infections and improving animal production. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) with remarkable functional properties have been evaluated in different studies as possible probiotic candidates. The purpose of this study was to isolate, characterize and assess the potentials of LAB from poultry gastrointestinal tract as potential poultry probiotics.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Results</jats:title> <jats:p>Potential LAB probiotics were isolated from broilers, characterized and evaluated for probiotic properties including antagonistic activity (against <jats:italic>Escherichia coli</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>E. coli</jats:italic> O157: H7, <jats:italic>Enterococcus faecalis</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>Salmonella</jats:italic> Typhimurium, <jats:italic>S.</jats:italic> Enteritidis and <jats:italic>Listeria monocytogenes</jats:italic>), survivability in simulated gastric juice, tolerance to phenol and bile salts, adhesion to ileum epithelial cells, auto and co-aggregation, hydrophobicity, α–glucosidase inhibitory activity, and antibiotic susceptibility tests. Most promising LAB strains with excellent probiotic potentials were identified by API 50 CHL and 16S rRNA sequencing as <jats:italic>Lactobacillus reuteri</jats:italic> I2, <jats:italic>Pediococcus acidilactici</jats:italic> I5, <jats:italic>P. acidilactici</jats:italic> I8, <jats:italic>P. acidilactici</jats:italic> c3, <jats:italic>P. pentosaceus</jats:italic> I13, and <jats:italic>Enterococcus faecium</jats:italic> c14. They inhibited all the pathogens tested with zones of inhibition ranging from 12.5 ± 0.71 to 20 ± 0 mm, and competitively excluded (<jats:italic>P</jats:italic> < 0.05) the pathogens examined while adhering to ileum epithelial cells with viable counts of 3.0 to 6.0 Log CFU/ml. The selected LAB strains also showed significant (<jats:italic>P</jats:italic> < 0.005) auto and co-aggregation abilities with α-glucosidase inhibitory activity ranging from 12.5 to 92.0%. The antibiotic susceptibility test showed 100.00% resistance of the LAB strains to oxacillin, with multiple antibiotic resistance indices above 0.5.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Conclusion</jats:title> <jats:p>The selected LAB strains are ideal probiotic candidates which can be applied in the field for the improvement of poultry performance and control of pathogens in poultry, hence curtailing further transmission to humans.</jats:p> </jats:sec>