{"id":102003,"date":"2022-07-08T11:37:29","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T09:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ew-nutrition.com\/how-stop-endotoxins-decreasing-animal-performance-natural-solution\/"},"modified":"2022-09-20T08:41:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-20T06:41:02","slug":"how-stop-endotoxins-decreasing-animal-performance-natural-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ew-nutrition.com\/us\/how-stop-endotoxins-decreasing-animal-performance-natural-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop endotoxins from decreasing animal performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Marisabel Caballero<\/em>,\u00a0Global Technical Manager Poultry,\u00a0and Sabria Regragui Mazili, Editor<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Find out why endotoxemia threatens animal production and how intelligent toxin mitigation solution SOLIS MAX can support\u00a0endotoxin management<\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Figure 1: Structure of Lipopolysaccharide<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The quick guide to endotoxins (LPS) and what to do about them<\/h1>\n

Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are a constant challenge for animal production. LPS, which are also known as endotoxins, are the major building blocks of the outer walls of Gram-negative bacteria (see figure 1). Throughout its life cycle, a bacterium releases these molecules upon cell death and lysis. When endotoxins are released into the intestinal lumen of chickens or swine, or in the rumen of polygastric animals, they can cause serious\u00a0damage to the animal\u2019s health and performance<\/a><\/span>\u00a0by over-stimulating their immune system.<\/p>\n

LPS may induces inflammation and fever, lowering feed intake, and redirecting nutritional resources to the immune response, which results in hindered animal performance.<\/p>\n

Endotoxins depress animal performance<\/h2>\n

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One of the biggest issues caused by endotoxemia is that animals reduce their feed intake and show a poor feed conversion rate (FCR). Why does this happen? The productive performance of farm animals (producing milk, eggs, or meat) requires nutrients. An animal also requires a certain baseline amount of nutrients for maintenance, that is, for all activities related to its survival.<\/p>\n

As a result of inflammation, endotoxemia leads to a feverish state. Maintenance needs to continue; hence, the energy required for producing heat will be diverted from the nutrients usually spent on production of milk, eggs, meat, etc., and performance suffers. This is amplified because the immune reaction also requires resources (e.g., energy, amino acids, etc. to produce more immune cells).<\/p>\n

The inflammation response can result in mitochondrial injury to the intestinal cells, which alter the cellular energy metabolism. This is reflected in changes to the levels in adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy \u201ccurrency\u201d of living cells. A study by Li et al. (2015) observed\u00a0a respective reduction of 15% and 55% in the ATP levels of the jejunum and ileum of LPS-challenged broilers<\/a><\/span>, compared to the unchallenged control group.<\/p>\n

\"\"A\u00a0piglet study by Huntley, Nyachoti, and Patience (2017)<\/a><\/span>\u00a0found that LPS-challenged pigs retained 15% less of the available metabolizable energy and showed 25% less nutrient deposition (figure 2). These results illustrate how animal performance declines during endotoxemia.<\/p>\n