Montmorillonite improved the intestinal mucosal barrier functions of laying hens in late production

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with montmorillonite (MMT) on performance, intestinal endotoxin concentration, gut mucosal oxidation status, intestinal morphology and permeability, and immunological barrier function of laying hens during late production. Four hundred and eighty 75‐week‐old laying hens (Lohmann Brown) were randomly assigned to five treatments with eight replicates per treatment and 12 hens in each replicate. The hens were fed the basal diet supplemented with 0 (control), 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, or 1.2 g MMT/kg for 70 days. Compared with the control, supplemented with 0.9 g MMT/kg increased egg mass significantly (p < 0.05) during weeks 1–5 of the experiment. Supplemented with 0.6 and 0.9 g MMT/kg also increased the endotoxin concentration in the ileal digesta (p < 0.05), but decreased the MDA concentration in the ileum significantly (p < 0.05). The T‐AOC in the jejunum of the group fed 0.3 g MMT/kg was significantly increased (p < 0.05). Compared with the control, the villus height:crypt depth of ileum from the groups fed 0.6, 0.9, and 1.2 g MMT/kg increased significantly (p < 0.05). The sIgA concentration of jejunum in the groups fed 0.6 and 0.9 g MMT/kg was higher (p < 0.05) than the control. The MMT supplementation linearly increased (p < 0.05) the mRNA expression of claudin‐1 and claudin‐5 in the jejunum. Dietary MMT supplementation down‐regulated the mRNA expression of NF‐κB P65 and TNF‐α in the jejunum in a linear and quadratic manner (p < 0.05). The IL‐1β mRNA expression of jejunum in the group fed 0.6 g MMT/kg was lower (p < 0.05) than the control. In conclusion, dietary supplementation with MMT may improve the gut barrier functions and suggests that 0.9 g/kg of MMT in diets may be the optimal supplemental level for laying hens in late production.

Montmorillonite combined organic acid or essential oil complex improves the intestinal health status of laying hens

“…Gross villus height and crypt depth measures are generally used to assess intestinal structure integrity. The present study showed that hens fed with the diets containing MOA or MEO complex developed higher villus height-to-crypt depth ratio in the small intestine, which was similar to the results of Chen et al [4,8], Wang et al [11], and Yarmohammadi Barbarestani et al [12]. The mechanism through which MOA and MEO complexes inclusion improved the intestinal morphology has been associating with their ability to suppress the intestinal pathogenic bacteria, which may improve the ability of intestinal epithelial cells to regenerate villus and reduce damage to villi caused by harmful bacteria and toxins [10].…”

“…In this study, the MOA and MEO complexes supplementation down-regulated the mRNA expression levels of MyD88, NF-κB p65, and IL-1β and reduced numerically the TLR4 mRNA expression of the ileum, indicating that MOA and MEO complexes may inhibit the in ammatory responses by modulating the signal pathway of TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB. This nding was similar to the results of Chen et al [8], Yang et al [10], and Liu et al [22]. Many harmful bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella exhibit structural characteristics of the lipopolysaccharide-constructed cell membrane, so they can be recognized by TLR4, and they then transmit signals to activate in ammatory responses.…”

“…In this study, inclusion of MOA complex in diets increased the claudin-5 mRNA expression of the ileum. Similarly, our previous study has shown that dietary supplementation with MMT up-regulated the mRNA expression levels of occludin, claudin-1, and claudin-5 of the jejunum in laying hens [4,8]. And the OA has also been demonstrated to regulate the genes expression of tight junction proteins in the intestine of poultry [10,30].…”

“…MMT could increase performance through binding mycotoxins and bacterial toxins in the intestinal tract, regulating the balance of intestinal microbiota, improving the activity of digestive enzyme, and maintaining the gut barrier functions [5][6][7]. And MMT has also been found to be one of the most promising intestinal health regulators [3,4,8]. Organic acids (OA) and essential oils (EO) have also attracted increased attention from the poultry industry.…”

Dietary Montmorillonite Improves the Intestinal Mucosal Barrier and Optimizes the Intestinal Microbial Community of Weaned Piglets

“…*P < 0.05 and **P < 0.01. and barrier integrity (Farhadi, 2005). That the relative mRNA expression of ileal MUCIN-1, ITGB1, and PKC were upregulated by adding montmorillonite revealed that the addition of montmorillonite improved the intestinal barrier function (Hu et al, 2012;Jiao et al, 2015Jiao et al, , 2018Chen J. F. et al, 2019Chen J. F. et al, , 2020; this was caused by the swelling property of montmorillonite, which will cause the volume of intake feed to become larger, slowing down the time of passing through the intestinal tract and promoting the metabolism of intestinal epidermal cells (Subramaniam and Kim, 2015).…”