(Press-News.org) A paper recently published in the Journal of Animal Science helps researchers further understand how microbials and probiotics affect poultry health.
Researchers at the North Carolina State University and Chung Jen College of Nursing, Health Sciences and Management (Taiwan) conducted a study to investigate the effects of direct fed microbials on energy metabolism in different tissues of broiler chickens. The researchers wanted to learn how consuming microbials and probiotics could change energy use and immune function. Typically, direct fed microbials and probiotics are used to improve livestock health, but how they actually work is not fully understood.
These findings could have long standing implications as producers feel the pressure to move away from the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics.
"Microbials are not a direct replacement [for sub-therapeutic antibiotics] but an opportunity through a different mechanism," said Matthew Koci, coauthor of the study and assistant professor in the department of poultry science at North Carolina State University.
In the study, 192 one-day-old broiler chicks were assigned to two different diets. One of the diets was a standard control starter diet (CSD) and the other was a CSD with direct fed microbials (DFMD). The researchers then injected twelve broilers from each diet group with sheep red blood cells at days seven, 14 and 21. The presence of sheep red blood cells challenged the chicks' immune systems without actually causing illness.
"We wanted to give the immune system something to respond to and didn't want to change the metabolism with a disease," said Koci.
Researchers measured several parameters, including body weight, whole-body energy expenditure, tissue respiration rates, and energy metabolism.
Over a 28-day period, the researchers found no difference in body weight or feed efficiency between broilers fed CSD or DFMD. In fact, there was no difference between the two treatments in any of the response criteria.
But Koci believes there may have been something going on behind the scenes. He theorizes that the interaction between direct fed microbial species and intestinal cells results in a change in the energy consumption in the small intestine. This leads to an increase in the amount of energy available to the immune system. The results of the present experiment are the first to indicate that direct fed microbials leads to increased energy expenditures by the immune system.
Through some unknown mechanism, broilers fed the microbial diet may have a faster, not better, response in their immune system. The DFMD was not promoting growth, but under disease stress, the bird would be able to get back to optimal growth in fewer days than birds not fed microbials.
Koci cautioned that individual producers may see different results from microbial use in the diet depending on the production system. He also said that not all body tissues were studied, so there could be energy directed toward other tissues that were not accounted for.
In the future, the researchers are looking to study which mechanism or microbial is directly responsible for immune responses.
"We hope to look at the physiological effects and trace them back to the signaling pathway," said Koci.
###
This study is titled "Direct fed microbial supplementation repartitions host energy to the immune systems." It can be read in full at journalofanimalscience.org.
Scientific contact:
Matthew D. Koci
Department of Poultry Science
North Carolina State University, Raleigh
mdkoci@ncsu.edu
Media contact:
Lauren Williams
American Society of Animal Science Communications
laurenw@asas.org
END
A new Johns Hopkins study has unraveled the changes in a key cardiac protein that can lead to heart muscle malfunction and precipitate heart failure.
Troponin I, found exclusively in heart muscle, is already used as the gold-standard marker in blood tests to diagnose heart attacks, but the new findings reveal why and how the same protein is also altered in heart failure. Scientists have known for a while that several heart proteins — troponin I is one of them — get "out of tune" in patients with heart failure, but up until now, the precise origin of the "bad notes" remained ...
Abstinence from smoking seems to affect teens differently than adults in a couple ways, but a new study provides evidence that most of the psychological difficulties of quitting are as strong for relatively new, young smokers as they are for adults who have been smoking much longer.
"Adolescents are showing — even relatively early in the dependence process — significant, strong, negative effects just after acute abstinence from smoking," said L. Cinnamon Bidwell, assistant professor (research) in psychiatry and human behavior and the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies. ...
Tropical Depression 14 strengthened into Tropical Storm Nadine while NASA's Hurricane Severe Storm Sentinel Mission, or HS3 mission, was in full-swing and NASA's Global Hawk aircraft captured the event. While the Global Hawk was gathering data over the storm, NASA satellites were also analyzing Nadine from space.
NASA's Global Hawk landed back at Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va., after spending a full day gathering data from the 14th Atlantic Tropical Depression that strengthened into Tropical Storm Nadine during the morning hours of Sept. 12.
The Global ...
One of NASA's infrared "eyes" is an instrument that flies aboard the Aqua satellite, and it provided data that helped forecasters determine that low pressure "System 90E" strengthened into the eastern Pacific Ocean's eleventh tropical depression.
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard Aqua captured an infrared image of System 90E on Sept. 11 at 1947 UTC (3:47 p.m. EDT). That infrared image took the temperatures of the cloud tops and found some strong, high thunderstorms wrapped around the western side of the low pressure area's circulation, from north ...
Chevy Chase, MD—Gestational exposure to ambient urban air pollution, especially during late pregnancy, may contribute to lower vitamin D levels in offspring, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM). According to study authors, this could affect the child's risk of developing diseases later in life.
Recent data have demonstrated that maternal vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy may have an influence on the development of asthma and allergic diseases in offspring. A number ...
Chevy Chase, MD—Slow-wave sleep, or 'deep sleep', is intimately involved in the complex control of the onset of puberty, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM).
The many changes that occur in boys and girls during puberty are triggered by changes in the brain. Previous studies have shown that the parts of the brain that control puberty first become active during sleep, but the present study shows that it is deep sleep, rather than sleep in general, that is associated with ...
Chevy Chase, MD—There is no evidence to link mildly elevated thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels to an increase in mortality among the elderly, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). The findings suggest that reflexively treating mild elevations of TSH in those of advanced age is unnecessary.
TSH is a sensitive, commonly measured test to check thyroid function. TSH levels are inversely related to thyroid hormone levels – thyroid hormone levels below a set-point trigger ...
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues have discovered that changes in the physical characteristics of the effector memory regulatory T cell can predict the progression risk of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) to acute myeloid leukemia. The finding could improve prognostication for patients with MDS and better inform therapeutic decision making.
The study published in the August issue of The Journal of Immunology.
Awareness of the condition increased earlier this year when ABC's "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts announced that she is battling ...
Half of mobile phone users in North America today have smartphones, and that number is quickly growing. Canadian tech startup, qwica interactive, is capitalizing on the rapidly emerging trend of seamless information gathering utilizing smartphones and scannable barcodes called QR codes. The qwica system simplifies the creation and management of mobile-optimized web pages for customers and provides complete solutions for long-term and outdoor applications. qwica allows users to quickly access information and interactive content—even in multiple languages—by scanning a qwica ...
The Kings' Council takes place in the fictional land of Faerie, where a council consisting of the Fire King, Water King, Earth King, and Wind King rules over the fey. Each king has the power to control his given element and those divinely gifted powers have been passed from king to firstborn prince for thousands of years... until Queen Erlea of the Fire Kingdom gave birth to twins: Mikel and Alazne.
Alazne Katarin Lorea Viteri, the princess of the fire fey, had miraculously inherited the legendary hair and hands of fire just as her brother had, and for that reason she ...
