Interpretive Summary: A longer adaptation period to a functional amino acid-supplemented diet improves growth performance and immune status of Salmonella Typhimurium-challenged pigs

By Anne Zinn

Recently, it was shown that dietary supplementation with key functional amino acids improves growth performance and immune status of Salmonella Typhimurium-challenged pigs, but it is not known if Salmonella Typhimurium-challenged pigs would benefit from a longer adaptation period to functional amino acids. Therefore, a paper recently published in the Journal of Animal Science aimed to determine if an adaptation period to the supplementation of functional amino acids would impact growth performance and immune status of weaned pigs subsequently challenged with Salmonella The research team hypothesized that a longer period of feeding functional amino acids-supplemented diets to piglets would maximize the benefits on growth performance and immune status previously reported, which would therefore improve the performance and immune status in pigs inoculated with Salmonella.

Overall, the results of the present study suggests that a longer adaptation to diets supplemented with key functional amino acids, specifically Threonine, Methionine, and Tryptophan, above estimated requirements for growth improves the growth performance and immune status of pigs, mainly through improvements in gut health and reduction in Salmonella Typhimurium colonization. Additionally, the results show that the antioxidant defense systems are improved by functional amino acids intake, which could be attributed to the dynamism of sulfur bearing amino acids. metabolism. Moving forward, the supplementation of functional amino acids above requirement for growth could be a valuable tool to reduce the negative effects of windows of high enteric pathogen exposure.

The full paper can be found on the Journal of Animal Science webpage.