Bacterial supplement could help young pigs fight disease
Extra energy can help animals fight infections
2013-01-23
(Press-News.org) Jan. 22, 2013 - A common type of bacteria may help pigs stay healthy during weaning.
In a study of 36 weanling-age pigs, researchers found that a dose of lipid-producing Rhodococcus opacus bacteria increased circulating triglycerides. Triglycerides are a crucial source of energy for the immune system.
"We could potentially strengthen the immune system by providing this bacterium to animals at a stage when they are in need of additional energy," said Janet Donaldson, assistant professor in Biological Sciences Mississippi State University. "By providing an alternative energy source, the pigs are most likely going to be able to fight off infections more efficiently."
Donaldson and other researchers tested R. opacus because the bacterium naturally makes large amounts of triglycerides. Normally, R. opacus would use the triglycerides for its own energy, but a pig can use the triglycerides too.
Jeff Carroll, research leader for the USDA Agricultural Research Service Livestock Issues Research Unit in Lubbock, Texas, said R. opacus could be used sort of like an energy producing probiotic. He said weanling pigs are more susceptible to pathogens and stress because they have to adjust to a new diet and a new environment. To add to the risk, weaning comes at a time when a pig's immune system is immature. The stress of weaning can lead to reduced feed intake, less available energy and an increased risk of infection.
With an oral supplement of live R. opacus, weanling pigs would have an alternative source of energy. Even if pigs ate less feed, they would still have access to the triglycerides produced by these bacteria. The triglycerides could be used as an energy source during this critical stage of development.
Throughout the experiment, the researchers kept watch for any potential side effects. Donaldson said they saw no negative side effects in the pigs given R. opacus. Because of this success, Donaldson said pig producers might someday use R. opacus on their own farms. She said the bacteria could be provided to pigs through existing watering systems.
The next step in the experiment is to test how pigs given R. opacus react to an immune challenge such as Salmonella. Carroll said he is also curious to see if R. opacus can help calves stay healthy during transport.
"This could potentially be carried over to human health as well," Donaldson said.
INFORMATION:
This study was a collaboration between Janet Donaldson at Mississippi State University; Jeff Carroll at USDA-ARS' Livestock Issues Research Unit; Ty Schmidt at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Todd Callaway at USDA-ARS' Food and Feed Safety Research Unit; Jessica Grissett at Mississippi State University; and Nicole Burdick Sanchez at USDA-ARS' Livestock Issues Research Unit.
The abstract from this project, titled "Novel Use of Lipid-Producing Bacteria to Increase Circulating Triglycerides in Swine," is the 2013 recipient of the National Pork Board Swine Industry Award for Innovation. The award will be presented at the 2013 American Society of Animal Science Southern Section Meeting in Orlando, Florida.
Media Contact:
Madeline McCurry-Schmidt
American Society of Animal Science
Scientific Communications Associate
217-689-2435 / madelinems@asas.org
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2013-01-23
A novel software tool, developed at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, streamlines the detection of disease-causing genetic changes through more sensitive detection methods and by automatically correcting for variations that reduce the accuracy of results in conventional software. The software, called ParseCNV, is freely available to the scientific-academic community, and significantly advances the identification of gene variants associated with genetic diseases.
"The algorithm we developed detects copy number variation associations with a higher level of accuracy ...
2013-01-23
This flu season you've probably seen a number of friends on social media talking about symptoms.
New research from Brigham Young University says such posts on Twitter could actually be helpful to health officials looking for a head start on outbreaks.
The study sampled 24 million tweets from 10 million unique users. They determined that accurate location information is available for about 15 percent of tweets (gathered from user profiles and tweets that contain GPS data). That's likely a critical mass for an early-warning system that could monitor terms like "fever," ...
2013-01-23
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Coming out to one's family can be stressful, but gay black males face a unique set of personal, familial and social challenges.
"Parents and youths alike worry that gay men cannot meet the rigid expectations of exaggerated masculinity maintained by their families and communities," says Michael C. LaSala, director of the Master of Social Work program at Rutgers University School of Social Work. LaSala, an associate professor, recently completed an exploratory study of African American gay youth and their families from urban neighborhoods in New York ...
2013-01-23
BUFFALO, N.Y. – New University at Buffalo research demonstrates how defects in an important neurological pathway in early development may be responsible for the onset of schizophrenia later in life.
The UB findings, published in Schizophrenia Research (paper at http://bit.ly/Wq1i41), test the hypothesis in a new mouse model of schizophrenia that demonstrates how gestational brain changes cause behavioral problems later in life – just like the human disease.
Partial funding for the research came from New York Stem Cell Science (NYSTEM).
The genomic pathway, called the ...
2013-01-23
NEW YORK (January 22, 2013) -- A research study of more than 600 black patients with uncontrolled hypertension found that less than half were prescribed a diuretic drug with proven benefit that costs just pennies a day, report researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York's (VNSNY) Center for Home Care Policy and Research. The researchers say these new findings should be taken as a serious wake-up call for physicians who treat black patients with hypertension.
Their study, reported in the American Journal of Hypertension, found ...
2013-01-23
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – New research into the treatment and prognosis of gastrointestinal cancers was released today in advance of the tenth annual Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium being held January 24-26, 2013, at The Moscone West Building in San Francisco, CA.
Five important studies were highlighted today in a live presscast:
Postoperative Treatment with S-1 Chemotherapy Reduces Relapses and Extends Survival in Patients with Pancreatic Cancer: Early results from a Phase III clinical trial conducted in Japan show patients who received the chemotherapy drug S-1 after ...
2013-01-23
HOUSTON — Marked for death with molecular tags that act like a homing signal for a cell's protein-destroying machinery, a pivotal enzyme is rescued by another molecule that sweeps the telltale targets off in the nick of time.
The enzyme, called TRAF3, lives on to control a molecular network that's implicated in a variety of immune system-related diseases if left to its own devices.
The University of Texas MD Anderson scientists identified TRAF3's savior and demonstrated how it works in a paper published online Sunday in Nature.
By discovering the role of OTUD7B as ...
2013-01-23
New York University College of Nursing (NYUCN) researchers Michele G. Shedlin, PhD, and Joyce K. Anastasi, PhD, DrNP, FAAN, LAc, published a paper, "Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicines and Supplements by Mexican-Origin Patients in a U.S.–Mexico Border HIV Clinic," in the on-line version of the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care.
Complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) and therapies are often used to improve or maintain overall health and to relieve the side effects of conventional treatments or symptoms associated with chronic illnesses ...
2013-01-23
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Jan. 22, 2013 — A multi-center Phase III clinical trial demonstrates that Abraxane (nab-paclitaxel) plus gemcitabine is the first combination of cancer drugs to extend survival of late-stage pancreatic cancer patients compared to standard treatment.
The MPACT (Metastatic Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Clinical Trial) study was led by physicians from Scottsdale Healthcare's Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials, a partnership between Scottsdale Healthcare and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).
Their findings show that Abraxane ...
2013-01-23
A few years ago, manufacturers of water bottles, food containers, and baby products had a big problem. A key ingredient of the plastics they used to make their merchandise, an organic compound called bisphenol A, had been linked by scientists to diabetes, asthma and cancer and altered prostate and neurological development. The FDA and state legislatures were considering action to restrict BPA's use, and the public was pressuring retailers to remove BPA-containing items from their shelves.
The industry responded by creating "BPA-free" products, which were made from plastic ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Bacterial supplement could help young pigs fight disease
Extra energy can help animals fight infections
