Stress, Nutrition, and Intestinal Immune Responses in Pigs — A Review

Lee, In Kyu; Kye, Yoon Chul; Kim, Girak; Kim, Han Wool; Gu, Min Jeong; Umboh, Johnny; Maaruf, Kartini; Kim, Sung Woo; Yun, Cheol-Heui

Growth performance is the most critical factor for producers in the pig industry. Therefore, nutritional stress would be the greatest, if not the only, concern for them (Shen et al., 2014; Zhao et al., 2014) . In general, fasting negatively impacts porcine gut health in terms of physiology and immunology. Deprivation of feed and/or water for 24 hrs raised the level of cortisol in blood, and suppressed TNF-α expression in jejunum of weaned pigs. Interestingly, there were no disruption of the TJ proteins, including claudin-1, occludin and zonula occludens protein-1 (ZO-1) in jejunum and ileum (Horn et al., 2014) . Lacking glycine reduced the cell proliferation and protein synthesis, while apoptosis was increased in porcine gut epithelial cells. Coincidently, activation of both Akt and mammalian target of rapamycin (m-TOR) was reduced .