All procedures involving animals were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Jiangsu Province Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine and written up following the ARRIVE guidelines. Experiments were performed in accordance with published National Institutes of Health guidelines. 6–8-week-old C57BL/6 male healthy mice were used to adapt to the laboratory conditions for 1 week prior to the experiments. Ulcerative colitis was induced in mice by administering 3% DSS (W/V) solution in distilled water for 7 days. In the HQD group, the mice received 9.1 g/kg HQD via oral gavage daily along with DSS. Mice in control group and DSS group consumed the same volume of water as controls. In the last two days, mice in the experiments were given distilled water (Figure 1A ).
For antibiotic treatment, 1 g/L ampicillin (ICN Biomedicals), 1 g/L neomycin (Sigma), 0.5 g/L meronem (AstraZeneca) and 0.5 g/L vancomycin (Sigma) were added to the drinking water for 30 days. AB-containing drinking water was refreshed every second day [24 (link)].
For antibiotic treatment, 1 g/L ampicillin (ICN Biomedicals), 1 g/L neomycin (Sigma), 0.5 g/L meronem (AstraZeneca) and 0.5 g/L vancomycin (Sigma) were added to the drinking water for 30 days. AB-containing drinking water was refreshed every second day [24 (link)].