Functional bioactive substance improves the growth performance, antioxidant capacity and immune function of growth retardation pigs

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of composited functional bioactive substances on the growth performance and immune function of growth retardation (GR) pigs. Twenty-four 42-day-old GR pigs were fed with basal diet containing 0 or 0.5% composited functional bioactive substances package (FP) for 21 days. The results showed that dietary supplementation with FP decreased feed:gain ratio, increased the relative and absolute weight of the liver (P < 0.05). Supplementation with FP decreased serum alkaline phosphatase and malondialdehyde, but increased aspartic acid, cysteine, arginine, proline and taurine concentrations, as well as serum superoxide dismutase and catalase activities (p < 0.05). FP treatment increased all determined cytokines (IL-1β, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12, GM-CSF, IFN-γ, TGF-β1, TNF-α) concentrations in serum compared with the control treatment (p < 0.05). These findings indicate that functional bioactive substances can improve feed conversion rate, serum anti-oxidant capacity and immunity and can be as effective growth promoter in the GR piglets.

KEYWORDS:

• Growth retardation
• functional bioactive substance
• anti-oxidant capacity
• immunity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 31872991, 31501964, 31560640], Key Project of Hunan Provincial Education Department [grant number 16A096], “Double First Class” Construction Project of Hunan Agricultural University [kxk201801004].