Dietary Yeast Cell Wall Improves Growth Performance and Prevents of Diarrhea of Weaned Pigs by Enhancing Gut Health and Anti-Inflammatory Immune Responses

Abstract

Dietary yeast cell wall products (YCW) are recognized as a feed additive due to multifunctional benefits by the biological response modulators. Thus, this study was conducted to verify a potential advantage of YCW for improving growth performance, nutrient digestibility, immune responses, and intestinal health and microbiota of weaned pigs. A total of 112 weaned pigs (7.99 ± 1.10 kg of body weight; 28 days old) were arbitrarily allocated to two experimental treatments with eight pigs (four barrows and four gilts) per pen and seven replicate pens per treatment in a completely randomized block design (block = BW and sex): (1) a basal diet based on corn and soybean meal (CON) and (2) CON + 0.05% YCW. The experimental period was for 4 weeks. There were no differences in final body weight, average daily feed intake, and gain-to-feed ratio between dietary treatments. In contrast, pigs fed YCW had higher average daily gain (p = 0.088) and apparent ileal digestibility of DM (p p = 0.052) and lower diarrhea frequency (p = 0.083) than those fed control diet (CON). Pigs fed YCW also had a higher (p p p p p Prevotella and Roseburia compared with CON. This study provided that dietary YCW improved growth rate, nutritional digestibility, and intestinal health and modified immune responses and intestinal microbiota of weaned pigs.

Keywords

• diarrhea
• growth performance
• gut microbiota
• ileal gene expression
• immune responses
• intestinal morphology