Abstract
In recent years, the use of in-feed antibiotics for growth and disease prevention in livestock production has been under severe scrutiny. The use and misuse of in-feed antibiotics has led to problems with drug residues in animal products and increased bacterial resistance. Chicken egg yolk antibodies (IgY) have attracted considerable attention as an alternative to antibiotics to maintain swine health and performance. Oral administration of IgY possesses many advantages over mammalian IgG such as cost-effectiveness, convenience and high yield. This review presents an overview of the potential to use IgY immunotherapy for the prevention and treatment of swine diarrhea diseases and speculates on the future of IgY technology. Included are a review of the potential applications of IgY in the control of enteric infections of either bacterial or viral origin such as enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., rotavirus, porcine transmissible gastroenteritis virus, and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus. Some potential obstacles to the adoption of IgY technology are also discussed.
Highlights
Antibiotics have been widely used in the swine industry for more than 50 years
In a prophylactic efficacy experiment, oral administration with IgY significantly increased newborn piglet survival rate (87.5 %) after challenge exposure compared with the control (43 %), whereas the therapeutic effects demonstrate that mortality was dramatically reduced by orally administered IgY in two farms that showed transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) positive results [61]
Studies by Marquardt et al [34] showed that 1.5 g per day per piglet was sufficient to prevent diarrhea induced by infection with 1010 enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) and the addition of 0.2 % of egg-yolk antibody in the diet was preventive against diarrhea in commercial farms
Summary
Antibiotics have been widely used in the swine industry for more than 50 years. The efficacy of antibiotics in increasing growth rate, improving feed utilization, and reducing incidence of disease is well documented [1]. Control piglets (treated with IgY from non-immunized hens) had severe diarrhea within 12 h and lost weight and 30 % of the pigs died within 48 h of infection. In addition to reducing the incidence and severity of piglet diarrhea, several studies have shown that IgY has growth promoting effects in early-weaned pigs, similar to spray-dried animal plasma and spray-dried porcine plasma [36,37,38,39].
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