With a potential use of prophylactic functional food additives to animal feed, the application of antiadhesive compounds against the gastrointestinal docking of pathogenic microorganisms is increasingly under discussion. High-molecular glycosylated compounds (polysaccharides and glycoproteins) isolated from the immature fruits of the okra plant, Abelmoschus esculentus (L.) MOENCH, were shown to have a strong antiadhesive activity against Helicobacter pylori, leading to an inhibition of binding to mucosal epithelia from human stomach in situ. In order to evaluate a further potential use these polymers were additionally tested concerning the adhesion of Campylobacter jejuni towards intestinal epithelia derived from chicken, the transducer of this germ to humans. Using an in situ adhesion model with fluorescent-labelled Campylobacter cells, the bacterial adhesion was shown to occur predominantly within jejunum and colon sections of the GUT of these animals, but only to a low extend on stomach, ileum and caecum tissue. Under these conditions, isolated okra polysaccharides strongly inhibited the microbial adhesion to colonic tissue. Within a controlled in vivo infection study over 42 days with chicken broilers infected with Campylobacter and fed with okra aqueous extract (5 and 10%) no significant reduction in Campylobacter excretion was observed, indicating that intestinal decontamination is not possible by the oral application of these compounds.
