Studies on the health impact of Agrimonia procerain piglets

Abstract

BackgroundThe weaning period is critical for stress-related diseases and infections. Currently, large amounts of therapeutic antimicrobials are used to treat infections in the livestock production, especially in piglets. Phytogenic feed additives could provide a useful alternative. We hypothesize, that components in agrimonia species which have been used successfully in humans to treat gastrointestinal infections could also improve the health of piglets. We investigated the effects of Agrimonia procera (AP) on the growth performance of piglets and cytokine expression in isolated porcine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC).ResultsHere we show that piglets that received a diet with 0.56 g/kg AP for 6 weeks tended to ingest more food (+5.1%; P < 0.10), and were characterized by a higher nitrogen retention (+9.6%, P < 0.05) than the control group without AP treatment. Data from a second experiment reveal that piglets fed a diet with 0.87 g/kg AP for 6 weeks had an improved food conversion ratio (1.46 ± 0.04) compared to those that received none (1.54 ± 0.08) or 8.7 g/kg AP (1.60 ± 0.08) with their diets (P < 0.001). However, the food intake, daily weight gain and dry matter of feces were not affected by the AP treatment.Treatment of PBMC for 1 and 6 h with AP extract (APE) reduced the mRNA abundance of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)α in cells challenged with lipopolysaccharides (LPS) but not in cells without LPS stimulation (P < 0.05). The lower mRNA expression of TNFα was accompanied by a trend towards a lower release of TNFα from these cells (P = 0.067). After the treatment of PBMC with APE for 6 h, the relative mRNA concentration of interleukin (IL)-1β declined (P < 0.05), whereas that of IL-10 remained unchanged. Treatment of LPS-challenged PBMC for 20 h with varying concentrations of APE did not reveal any effect on cytokine expression and TNFα release.ConclusionsThe results indicate that low dosages of AP may improve the growth performance of piglets and seem to exert antiinflammatory effects in porcine immune cells challenged with LPS.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-014-0210-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The effects of adding agrimony and sage extracts to water on blood biochemistry and meat quality of broiler chickens

“…Increasing interest is devoted to using plant extracts (e.g. essential oils, oleoresins, and flavonoids) in animal and poultry nutrition required for the food industry, because herbal substances possess a much higher biological activity compared to plants from which they were derived (Windisch et al 2008;Gräber et. al.…”

The phytochemical investigation of Agrimonia eupatoria L. and Agrimonia procera Wallr. as valid sources of Agrimoniae herba—The pharmacopoeial plant material

“…The phytochemical investigations into A. procera are scarce. Three preliminary HPLC methods were developed for the screening of this plant material showing that fragrant agrimony contains agrimoniin, and flavonoids generally defined as luteolin and apigenin glycosides [12,14].…”

Agrimonia procera exerts antimicrobial effects, modulates the expression of defensins and cytokines in colonocytes and increases the immune response in lipopolysaccharide-challenged piglets

“…Additionally, A. eupatoria L. failed to affect the growth performance of farm animals [ 66 ]. In contrast, AP had a positive effect on nitrogen retention and food conversion ratio [ 18 ]. Antioxidant effects were also found in other studies [ 67 ].…”

“…TNFα and CRP concentrations in plasma were determined by using an ELISA kit (R&D systems, Minneapolis, USA). The antioxidant capacity of plasma was assessed by using a Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) assay as described elsewhere [ 18 ].…”

“…AP also contains larger amounts of the bitter-tasting compound agrimoniin [ 17 ]. Recently, we were able to show that treatment of porcine peripheral blood monocytes with AP extract reduced the mRNA abundance of TNFα in cells challenged with LPS but not in unchallenged cells [ 18 ]. However, the available data do not allow a final evaluation of whether AP and its bioactive compounds could be used for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases in pigs.…”