Camel-milk kefir shifted gut bacteria in mice — but sequencing used only three animals per group. The stronger result was that its live microbes stayed above 10 million per millilitre

Researchers fermented camel milk with three concentrations of kefir grains, then measured acidity, microbes, taste and refrigerated stability. They also fed the middle formulation to healthy mice for 21 days, comparing it with pasteurised camel milk and no milk treatment.

Fermentation lowered pH from 6.54 to between 3.5 and 3.9. Lactic acid bacteria, bifidobacteria and yeasts remained above 7 log10 colony-forming units per millilitre through 14 days at 4°C — more than ten million viable organisms per millilitre on the culture count scale. Grain concentration did not clearly change the sensory scores.

Mice given kefir had the highest cultured faecal lactic-acid-bacteria counts and the lowest yeast and mould counts of the three groups. Sequencing suggested a shift from a Bacteroidota-dominated to a Bacillota-dominated colon community and enrichment of the Lachnospiraceae NK4A136 group, which is often associated with butyrate production.

The eye-catching microbiome result rests on only three sequenced mice per group. Overall within-sample diversity did not differ, and changing the relative abundance of a bacterial group is not automatically a health benefit. The experiment tested healthy mice, not people with digestive disease, and did not test symptoms, inflammation or clinical outcomes. It shows that this food can be fermented consistently and can alter a small mouse microbiome sample — not that camel-milk kefir treats the human gut.