Dietary Supplemented Curcumin Improves Meat Quality and Antioxidant Status of Intrauterine Growth Retardation Growing Pigs via Nrf2 Signal Pathway

Intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) exhibits programming consequences and may induce oxidative stress in growing animals and humans. This study was conducted to investigate the hypothesis that dietary curcumin may protect growing pigs from IUGR-induced oxidative stress via the Nrf2 pathway. Twelve normal birth weight (NBW) and 24 IUGR female piglets were selected and fed control diets supplemented 0 (NBW), 0 (IUGR) and 200 (IUGR + Cur) mg/kg curcumin from 26 to 115 days of age (n = 12). Growth performance, meat quality, redox status and its related Nrf2 pathway were determined. Results showed that IUGR pigs exhibited decreased body weight on 0 d, 26 d and 56 d (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.01) but had no difference on 115 d among NBW, IUGR and IUGR + Cur groups (<i>p</i> &gt; 0.05). Compared with NBW and IUGR groups, a significant decrease in drip loss (24 h and 48 h) was observed in the IUGR + Cur group (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.01). IUGR pigs had higher concentrations of malondialdehyde (MDA) (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.01) and protein carbonyl (PC) (<i>p</i> = 0.03) and lower activities of glutathione peroxidase (<i>p</i> = 0.02), catalase (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.01) and peroxidase (<i>p</i> = 0.02) in leg muscles than NBW pigs. Dietary-added 200 mg/kg curcumin decreased concentrations of MDA and PC and improved the activities of catalase, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase as compared to the IUGR group (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.05). Additionally, dietary curcumin enhanced protein (NQO1) and mRNA expression of genes (Nrf2, NQO1, gamma-glutamyltransferase 1 (GGT1), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), glutathione S-transferase (GST) and catalase (CAT)) as compared to the IUGR group (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.05). These results suggest that dietary curcumin could serve as a potential additive to enhance redox status and improve meat quality of IUGR growing pigs via the Nrf2 signal pathway.