Effect of diet supplemented with enzymatically treated Artemisia annua L. on intestinal digestive function and immunity in weaned pigs
2020
Yu Niu | Yongwei Zhao | Jintian He | Yang Yun | Yong Shi | Lili Zhang | Tian Wang
The present experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of enzymatically treated Artemisia annua L. (EA) on intestinal digestive function and immune capacity in weaned pigs. Firstly, a total of 300 21-day-old piglets were randomly allotted to five groups, including CON, EA1, EA2, EA3, and EA4 groups (basal diet supplemented with 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4 g/kg EA, respectively). At 50 days of age, the results showed that pigs in the EA3 group presented significant improvements (p < .05) of growth performance and health status when compared with those of the CON group. According to the results above, we considered 2 g/kg EA as the optimal dose for pig diets. Therefore, we selected 12 pigs from the CON and EA3 groups (n = 6) at 51 days of age for further investigation in vivo. Compared with the CON group, EA3 group significantly increased (p < .05) small intestinal length of pigs, enhanced (p < .05) the activities of amylase, trypsin and Na+-K+-ATPase and the concentrations of glucose transporter in both jejunum and ileum. EA3 group had lower (p < .05) concentrations of interleukin 1β, interleukin 6 and tumour necrosis factor α in the jejunum and higher (p < .05) concentrations of interleukin 10, secretory immunoglobulin A and immunoglobulin G in the ileum of pigs than the CON group. These results demonstrated that EA provided a dietary nutritional means to improve intestinal function of weaned pigs and 2 g/kg was the optimal dose for weaned pigs in the present study.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by Directory of Open Access Journals