Skip to main content
ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » National Laboratory for Agriculture and The Environment » Agroecosystems Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #424023
Research Project: Physiological, Microbiological, and Nutritional Mechanisms to Maintain Animal Productivity in the Absence of Antibiotics

Location: Agroecosystems Management Research

Title: Feed restriction as a model for small intestinal permeability in nursery pigs

Author
item Pearce, Sarah
item Kerr, Brian

Submitted to: Journal of Animal Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/16/2025
Publication Date: 4/22/2025
Citation: Pearce, S.C., Kerr, B.J. 2025. Feed restriction as a model for small intestinal permeability in nursery pigs. Journal of Animal Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skaf131.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skaf131

Interpretive Summary: Reduced animal feed intake can be caused by a number of health and environmental conditions including disease and heat. Feed reduction has been shown to cause leaky gut and additional issues within the gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, we used a model with varying degrees of feed restriction to test methods which measure intestinal permeability and function of the gastrointestinal tract to determine whether we would be able to validate our methods and whether this would be a good model moving forward. We were able to show that restricting feed intake more than 50% caused reduced body weight gain, increased intestinal leakiness, changes to the structure of the intestine, and increased inflammation. Although not all methods matched exactly, the overall data set showed that the various methods were overall highly correlated and that the structure of the intestine may be the best indicator of health and function. The findings of this study could be used by pork producers, veterinarians and other animal science researchers.

Technical Abstract: Reduced feed intake is a hallmark of many animal diseases and environmental conditions and has been shown to cause intestinal barrier dysfunction. As there are several markers and assays to evaluate intestinal barrier function, feed restriction may present a potential model to validate and compare multiple in vivo, ex vivo, and tissue markers of intestinal integrity. Forty eight barrows (9.7 kg initial BW) were fed for 7 d at feed intakes of 100%, 75%, 50% or 25% of expected ad libitum feed intake. After which urine, blood were taken for in vivo lactulose:mannitol analysis while tissues from the small intestine were taken for examination of intestinal function including ex vivo tissue transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER), tissue fluorescein isothiocyanate–dextran (FD4) transport, as well as small intestinal morphology, and gene expression. As expected, actual feed intake followed a linear pattern, as did body weight change. Results showed tissue changes in morphology in duodenum, jejunum and ileum at 25 and 50% feed restriction (P<0.05). There were no significant differences in TEER, however there was a tendency for a significant increase in urinary lactulose:mannitol at 25% compared to 75 and 100% (P<0.10). Similarly, Pro-inflammatory marker, IL17A was increased at 25% feeding level compared to 75 and 100% (P<0.05). Taken together, these data show that feed restriction may be a good model to compare validation methods for intestinal permeability and function, but that timing of feed restriction may have reduced larger impacts on intestinal function observed in other studies.