Authors : Nadeem Shabir, Byung-Dae Yoon, Amina Khatun, Bum-Seok Kim, Ji-Hoon Shin, Keug-Hyun Ahn and Won-Il Kim
Abstract: Although, the antimicrobial effects of β-Glucan (BG) have been described previously, the use of β-glucan in food animal production has been unrealistic due to high production costs. Recently, pure β-glucan could be efficiently produced by cultivating mutant Aureobasidium pullans which contains a disrupted pul gene and the new method can simplify purification process and reduce mass production costs. Thus, the effect of the β-glucan purified from mutant A. pullans on salmonella infection in weaned pigs was evaluated in the study. Twenty, 4 weeks old pigs were randomly assigned to the following 4 groups: BG or BG-X group was provided with commercial feeds containing β-glucan (10 mg kg-1) or containing both β-glucan (10 mg kg-1) and Genkwadaphnin (10 mg kg-1), respectively; Normal Feed (NF) and Negative control (Neg.) groups were only provided with commercial feeds only. All the groups were provided with their specific diets for 2 weeks, challenged with Salmonella Typhimurium at 108 Colony Forming Units (CFU)/mL except for the Neg. group and sacrificed for pathological evaluation at 4 weeks after the challenge. As compared with the NF group, BG and BG-X groups showed significantly lower diarrhea incidence and salmonella shedding in feces and gained more weight after salmonella infection. Gross lesions were less severe in BG and BG-X groups but the differences reached no statistical significance. In conclusion this study demonstrated that the overall performance of weaned pigs fed β-glucan derived from A. pullan was enhanced upon challenge with salmonella by increasing weight gains and reducing both the incidence of diarrhea and fecal shedding of salmonella.
Nadeem Shabir, Byung-Dae Yoon, Amina Khatun, Bum-Seok Kim, Ji-Hoon Shin, Keug-Hyun Ahn and Won-Il Kim, 2013. Effects of Dietary Addition of β-Glucan on Pigs Infected with Salmonella Typhimuriu. Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, 12: 1657-1664.