Abstract
ABSTRACT The present experiment investigated the effects of galacto-oligosaccharide (GOS) on growth performance, faecal microbiota, immune response and antioxidant capability in weaned piglets. Ninety 28-day-old weaned piglets were randomly allocated into 5 treatments with 6 replicate pens per treatment and 3 piglets per pen (n = 18). These five diets were formulated by adding 0, 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 mg/kg GOS to the basal diet, respectively. The experiment was lasted for 28 days. Body weight and feed intake were determined. Faeces samples were collected to detect the amount of microbiota. Blood samples were used to determine antioxidative and immune parameters. The results indicated that GOS supplementation improved the growth performance, increased the number of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria and decreased the number of Escherichia coli in a linear or quadratic dose-dependent manner. Dietary GOS decreased serum concentration of pro-inflammatory cytokines in a quadratic dose-dependent manner, but increased anti-inflammatory cytokines in a linear or quadratic dose-dependent manner. Moreover, GOS supplementation promoted the activities of antioxidant enzyme in a linear or quadratic dose-dependent manner during the experiment. The levels of MDA quadratically decreased on d 28. These results suggested that GOS exhibited positive effects on growth performance, immune function and antioxidant capability in weaned piglets.
Highlights
Weaning period is a critical phase for piglets due to some factors such as underdeveloped immune function and changed microbiota composition in gut (Lallès et al 2007), when the piglets suffered from a range of disorders including anorexia, diarrhoea, growth suppression, intestinal microbe imbalance and increased susceptibility to diseases (Che et al 2012)
The present experiment investigated the effects of galacto-oligosaccharide (GOS) on growth performance, faecal microbiota, immune response and antioxidant capability in weaned piglets
The results indicated that GOS supplementation improved the growth performance, increased the number of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria and decreased the number of Escherichia coli in a linear or quadratic dose-dependent manner
Summary
Weaning period is a critical phase for piglets due to some factors such as underdeveloped immune function and changed microbiota composition in gut (Lallès et al 2007), when the piglets suffered from a range of disorders including anorexia, diarrhoea, growth suppression, intestinal microbe imbalance and increased susceptibility to diseases (Che et al 2012). A variety of beneficial health effects of GOS have been reported including modulating immune function and improving intestinal health (Dai et al 2014; Weaver et al 2011). Much attention has been focused on growth regulating effects of GOS. The most extensively used animal models to examine growth-promoting effect of GOS included rats (Sakaguchi et al 1998), broilers (Jung et al 2008), common carps (Hoseinifar et al 2017) and to a lesser extent pigs (Tian et al 2018); the results were inconsistent. No enhancing effects were observed on growth performance of rats and broilers fed diets containing GOS, whereas improvement in growth performance of pigs and common carps were observed
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