Piglet gut microbial shifts early in life: causes and effects

Abstract

The gut microbiome has long been known to play fundamentally important roles in the animal health and the well-being of its host. As such, the establishment and maintenance of a beneficial gut microbiota early in life is crucial in pigs, since early gut colonizers are pivotal in the establishment of permanent microbial community structures affecting the health and growth performance of pigs later in life. Emphasizing this importance of early gut colonizers, it is critical to understand the factors impacting the establishment of the piglet gut microbiome at weaning. Factors include, among others, diet, in-feed antibiotics, probiotics and prebiotic administration. The impact of these factors on establishment of the gut microbiome of piglets at weaning includes effects on piglet gut microbial diversity, structure, and succession. In this review, we thoroughly reviewed the most recent findings on the piglet gut microbiome shifts as influenced by weaning, and how these microbiome changes brought about by various factors that have been shown to affect the development of microbiota in piglets. This review will provide a general overview of recent studies that can help to facilitate the design of new strategies to modulate the gut microbiome in order to enhance gastrointestinal health, growth performance and well-being of piglets.

Microbiability of meat quality and carcass composition traits in swine

“…Results from Man-Whitney tests showed that alpha diversity at all stages were different ( P < 0.001) to each other. This was in accordance with similar studies in pigs and other organisms (Frese et al, 2015; Guevarra et al, 2019); Lu et al, 2018). The increase in alpha diversity with age was similar to what previously found by different authors (Chen et al, 2017; Kim et al, 2011; Looft and Allen, 2012; Thompson et al, 2008).…”

“…Our results suggested that diversity at weaning might not be an accurate predictor of growth, carcass and meat quality traits which agreed with Huttenhower et al (2012). Alpha diversity was reported to be associated with gut health of animal and associated with the normal physiology of host animals (Guevarra et al, 2019)). The major role could include the normal function of gut, enhance immune response and play active role in digestion and utilization of nutrients.…”

“…Different types of diet at different stage might explain the difference in alpha diversity at each stage. Piglets are exposed to a large number of stressors during weaning which triggered the physiological change in structure and function of intestine (Guevarra et al, 2019)). This change caused the microbial shift after weaning transition (Kim and Isaacson, 2015) and microbial succession continues until microbiota composition reaches to climax community (Chen et al, 2017) which consists of microbes that are stable in composition.…”

Early Parenteral Administration of Ceftiofur has Gender-Specific Short- and Long-Term Effects on the Fecal Microbiota and Growth in Pigs from the Suckling to Growing Phase

“…Despite the further increase in species richness (Chao1) and diversity (Shannon), differences in the microbiota composition were not as pronounced between days 28 (preweaning) and 97 (postweaning) as it might have been expected from previous work [35], which can be linked to the early introduction of solid feed in the present study. Commonly, weaning implies an abrupt shift from a high-fat, low-carbohydrate milk as the main feed source towards a high-carbohydrate, low-fat cereal-based diet, leading to taxonomic [36] and functional [28] shifts in the gut microbiota which are necessary for adaption to the new feed source. Interestingly, amylolytic Ruminococcaceae did not further increase as could be expected for starch-and hemicellulose-degrading bacteria but decreased from day 28 to 97 of life.…”

Intraepithelial T cells diverge by intestinal location as pigs age

“…from proximal to distal end of the intestinal tract and as pigs age (1,64,65), resulting in exposure to a larger and more diverse microbially-derived antigenic repertoire in distal intestinal regions and in older pigs. Correspondingly, percentages of CD27 + IETs were reduced at the distal but not proximal end of the intestinal tract as pigs aged, indicating distally-located intestinal IETs may be activated at higher frequencies, and the frequency of activation accrues with age (and presumably, antigen exposure).…”