Clostridium Butyricum is a gram-positive bacteria, living in soil, human and animal body, was first found and isolated by a Japanese scientist in 1933, has been used on human, livestock and aquatic animals for a long time, its absolute anaerobic bacteria so it can colonize in the hind-gut and produce various organic acids, such as butyric acid, amino acids, short chain fatty acids, and other beneficial metabolites such as enzymes, vitamins, peptides and so on. Clostridium Butyricum can provide many benefits to the host - balancing intestinal microflora, improving digestion, enhancing immunity, repairing intestinal damage and so on.

So, why Clostridium Butyricum is so special, the best way to explain is to make a comparison with other common probiotic strains widely used in animal farming. Every probiotic strain have common functions, such as improving digestion or inhibiting harmful bacteria, but their biological features can be so different, the key to probiotic studies and applications is using their unique feature to achieve different purposes. Lactobacillus is the most used probiotic strain for a long history, its amphimicrobe, main action point is in mid-gut, doesn’t have spore and can’t stand heat, so the main problem of lactobacillus applications is the stability, it relies on coating production technology to be stable, require cold-chain transportation and storage, which means you have to put your yogurt in the fridge, otherwise it will lose beneficial effects. Bacillus are aerobic bacteria, widely used in animal farming, agriculture and environment protection fields, with functions of inhibiting harmful bacteria, producing enzymes, decomposing harmful organic substance, adjusting water quality in aquaculture and so on, very cheap and easy to produce, the reproduction of Bacillus will quickly consume oxygen, this consuming process is actually competing with the host for energy and nutrition, so overuse of Bacillus will cause feed waste in animal farming, Bacillus has spores which means having high stress and heat tolerance, but it cant colonize in animal gut, just passing by, so we need very high bacteria count Bacillus products, usually 100 billion CFU. Saccharomyces is another widely used strain category, multi-functional, rich of protein, vitamins, enzymes and other beneficial substances, they don’t have spores so very low heat tolerance, and they’re not very cost efficient. Now, we take look at the unique features of Clostridium Butyricum, first of all, Clostridium Butyricum is absolute anaerobic bacteria, this allows Clostridium Butyricum to survive and reproduce in the hind-gut where is no oxygen, it doesn’t compete with the host for nutrition, in contrast, it will help the host to further digest the nutrients from the feed residue in the hind-gut before excreting, therefore, improve the efficiency of feed; Secondly, Clostridium Butyricum can transform into spore, which gives Clostridium Butyricum strong heat, acid and salt tolerance, allows it passing gastric acid and bile salt safely to reach hind-gut, this feature also gives Clostridium Butyricum high product stability, long shelf life, and it’s compatible with many antibiotics due to its strong chemical resistance; Third, Clostridium Butyricum has strong adhesion, can colonize in the intestinal tract to produce beneficial metabolizes, mainly the butyric acid, butyric acid is very important energy material for the epithelial cell regeneration, means Clostridium Butyricum can repair the intestinal damage and maintain the integrity of intestinal tract. Furthermore, the beneficial metabolites of Clostridium Butyricum not only benefit the host, but also promote the growth of other probiotic strains like Lactobacillus, play a leader role in teamwork of  compound probiotic products. To sum up,Clostridium Butyricum has advantages of both Lactobacillus and Bacillus. We will reveal more of Clostridium Butyricum’s functions, features and applications in my next videos.

There is one thing need to pay more attention because it is so important when you choose Clostridium Butyricum products, the sporulation. The quality and effectiveness of Clostridium Butyricum rely on not only sufficient bacterial count, but more importantly, the spores, high bacterial count does not mean high spore count.

The bacillus that are not in spore form will lose viability quickly and useless.

The key to guarantee the sporulation rate lies in the R&D strength and production technology of the manufacture, that is, screening & breeding of the strains, and how advanced of production technology & equipment would be, this means the producer need to have a strong R&D team and also spend years of efforts to select the strain with best potential and to train them into super soldiers. Good Clostridium Butyricum finished product must have high sporulation to be regarded as stable quality product, not only by looking at the viable bacteria count.