article · Antioxidants
Intrauterine growth retardation in newborn lambs impairs gut health, increasing colonic inflammation, oxidative stress, and gut barrier permeability. A study on newborn Hu lambs evaluated whether supplementing milk replacer with either one per cent L-arginine or zero point one per cent N-carbamylglutamate over twenty-one days could counteract these effects. The results demonstrated that both supplements significantly improved gut barrier integrity by boosting tight junction protein expression and electrical resistance. Furthermore, the treatments lowered colonic levels of reactive oxygen species, malondialdehyde, and inflammatory cytokines. Both additives decreased lipopolysaccharide levels, elevated beneficial short-chain fatty acids, and restored the abundance of key bacteria, including Clostridium, Lactobacillus, and Streptococcus. Overall, dietary L-arginine and N-carbamylglutamate mitigated colonic barrier damage and inflammation by positively modulating the intestinal microbiota.
Growth retardation during pregnancy leads to poor gut development, inflammation, and high vulnerability to disease in newborn livestock. Demonstrating that simple dietary additions to milk replacer can repair the gut barrier, reduce inflammation, and rebalance gut bacteria provides practical nutritional solutions. This helps improve the early health and survival rates of vulnerable young ruminants.
This research is at an applied and tested stage in an animal model, highlighting the direct use of L-arginine and N-carbamylglutamate as nutritional feed additives for newborn ruminants. Animal feed manufacturers and livestock producers could use these findings to formulate specialised milk replacers designed to treat early-life gut dysfunction and improve survival in low-birth-weight livestock.
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Our previous studies have revealed that dietary N-carbamylglutamate (NCG) and L-arginine (Arg) supplementation improves redox status and suppresses apoptosis in the colon of suckling Hu lambs with intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). However, no studies have reported the function of Arg or NCG in the colonic microbial communities, barrier function, and inflammation in IUGR-suckling lambs. This work aimed to further investigate how dietary Arg or NCG influences the microbiota, barrier function, and inflammation in the colon of IUGR lambs. Forty-eight newborn Hu lambs of 7 d old were assigned to four treatment groups (n = 12 per group; six male, six female) as follows: CON (normal birth weight, 4.25 ± 0.14 kg), IUGR (3.01 ± 0.12 kg), IUGR + Arg (2.99 ± 0.13 kg), and IUGR + NCG (3.03 ± 0.11 kg). A total of 1% Arg or 0.1% NCG was supplemented in a basal diet of milk replacer, respectively. Lambs were fed the milk replacer for 21 d until 28 d after birth. Compared to the non-supplemented IUGR lambs, the transepithelial electrical resistance (TER) was higher, while fluorescein isothiocyanate dextran 4 kDa (FD4) was lower in the colon of the NCG- or Arg-supplemented IUGR lambs (p < 0.05). The IUGR lambs exhibited higher (p < 0.05) colonic interleukin (IL)-6, IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels than the CON lambs; the detrimental effects of IUGR on colonic proinflammatory cytokine concentrations and redox status were counteracted by dietary Arg or NCG supplementation. Both IUGR + Arg and IUGR + NCG lambs exhibited an elevated protein and mRNA expression of Occludin, Claudin-1, and zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1) compared to the IUGR lambs (p < 0.05). Additionally, the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) concentration was decreased while the levels of acetate, butyrate, and propionate were increased in IUGR + Arg and IUGR + NCG lambs compared to the IUGR lambs (p < 0.05). The relative abundance of Clostridium, Lactobacillus, and Streptococcus was lower in the colonic mucosa of the IUGR lambs than in the CON lambs (p < 0.05) but was restored upon the dietary supplementation of Arg or NCG to the IUGR lambs (p < 0.05). Both Arg and NCG can alleviate colonic barrier injury, oxidative stress (OS), and inflammation by the modulation of colonic microbiota in IUGR-suckling lambs. This work contributes to improving knowledge about the crosstalk among gut microbiota, immunity, OS, and barrier function and emphasizes the potential of Arg or NCG in health enhancement as feed additives in the early life nutrition of ruminants.
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DOI: 10.3390/antiox11112251
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