Effects of immunostimulators on growth performance and immune response in pigs weaned at 21 days of age

Abstract

One hundred and fifty pigs with an average body weight of 6.6 kg were allotted to treatment in a completely randomized block design. The treatments included: 1. Control (basal diet), 2. P-glycan (basal diet + 40 ppm peptidoglycan), 3. MOS (basal diet + 0.1% mannanoligosaccharides), 4. MG (basal diet + 0.4% (3-glucan) and 5. NIS (basal diet + 300 ppm Nonspecific Immunostimulating Anionic Alkali Solution, rice bran was used as a carrier). Each treatment had 6 replicates with 5 pigs per replicate. Overall, although there were no significant differences in animal performance, pigs fed MOS showed better growth performance and feed efficiency than the other groups. Nutrients and amino acid digestibilities were improved during phase II (d 15 to 28 post-weaning) compared to phase

Functional Foods that Boost the Immune System

“…For example, trials in early weaning pigs have shown that β-glucan can help to overcome the lack of a mature gut-associated immune defence system against viral infection and bacterial infections. Similar results have also been demonstrated for other animals such as broiler hens (Johnson 1997;Kim et al 2000;Hiss & Sauerwein 2003;Burkey et al 2004;Jamroz et al 2004;London 2008).…”

Effect of mannan oligosaccharide supplementation on blood and intestinal immune cells, bacteria numbers and performance in weaned pigs

“…However, the later finding complementarily supports those of the 273 Systemic immune response to dietary mannans has been more widely studied, but obtained data are inconsistent. The proportions of peripheral blood CD4 + or CD8 + T cells were unchanged following mannan supplementation in early weaned pigs (Kim et al 2000). However, Davis et al (2004b) found a decreased blood neutrophils : lymphocytes ratio in pigs fed with 0.3% of phosphorylated mannans, suggesting that dietary mannans could moderate the inflammatory response associated with the stress accompanying weaning.…”

“…Dietary MOS has both indirect and direct modulatory effects on porcine immune response (Kim et al 2000) by promoting bacterial antigen presentation, thereby facilitating the shift from innate to adaptive immune responses (Davis et al 2004a). Such changes are likely attributable to an activation of the local immune defence mechanisms through the mannose binding receptors located at the apical surface of enterocytes.…”

Role of yeast cell wall polysaccharides in pig nutrition and health protection

“…Due to the content of the active polysaccharides β-D-glucan and α-D-mannan, application of these two products as feed supplement to pigs led to the beneficial results such as enhanced weanling piglets protection from bacterial infections and increased weight gain (Kim et al, 2000;LeMieux et al, 2003;Davis et al, 2002Davis et al, , 2004Miguel et al, 2004;Rozeboom et al, 2005). In agreement with the established immunomodulating properties, administration of β-D-glucan led to enhanced T cell interferon-γ release in swine, which resulted in increased protection against porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (Xiao et al, 2004) and augmented resistance of pigs and newborn piglets against bacterial endotoxin (Eicher et al, 2006;Li et al, 2006), whereas α-D-mannan component played role in stimulation of the complement Mannan-Binding Lectin pathway, a crucial factor of protection due to innate immunity mechanisms (Dlabac and Kawasaki, 1994) and BioMos® proved to be effective in weanling pigs against the infections caused by Escherichia and Salmonella spp.…”