Assessment of Hematologic and Biochemical Parameters for Healthy Commercial Pigs in China

Abstract

Simple SummaryIt is well known that hematologic and biochemical reference intervals (RIs) play a major role in defining the health state of an animal. China is home to over 50% of the world pig population, but the assessment of hematologic and biochemical parameters for healthy commercial pigs has not yet been well studied in China. Adopting hematologic and biochemical RIs from other regions may lead to misjudgments by clinicians or researchers. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the correlations between hematologic and biochemical parameters and to provide a basic reference for the establishment of blood RIs for commercial pigs in China. Since most hematologic and biochemical parameters were significantly different between nursery pigs and sows, we preliminarily established hematologic and biochemical RIs for nursery pigs and sows, respectively. Our results are useful for better assessing the health conditions of commercial pigs in China.Hematologic and biochemical data are useful for indicating disease diagnosis and growth performance in swine. However, the assessment of these parameters in healthy commercial pigs is rare in China. Thus, blood samples were collected from 107 nursery pigs and 87 sows and were analyzed for 25 hematologic and 14 biochemical variables. After the rejection of the outliers and the detection of the data distribution, the correlations between the blood parameters were analyzed and the hematologic/biochemical RIs were preliminarily established using the 95% percentile RI. Correlation analysis showed that albumin was the hub parameter among the blood parameters investigated, and genes overlapping with key correlated variables were discovered. Most of the hematologic and biochemical parameters were significantly different between nursery pigs and sows. The 95% RIs of white blood cells and red blood cells were 7.18–24.52 × 109/L and 5.62–7.84 × 1012/L, respectively, for nursery pigs, but 9.34–23.84 × 109/L and 4.98–8.29 × 1012/L for sows. The 95% RIs of total protein and albumin were 43.16–61.23 g/dL and 19.35–37.86 g/dL, respectively, for nursery pigs, but 64.96–88.68 g/dL and 31.91–43.28 g/dL for sows. In conclusion, our study highlights the variability in blood parameters between nursery pigs and sows and provides fundamental data for the health monitoring of commercial pigs in China.