Effects of Long-Term Dietary Protein Restriction on Intestinal Morphology, Digestive Enzymes, Gut Hormones, and Colonic Microbiota in Pigs

• Published in: Animals (Basel) Vol. 9; no. 4; p. 180
• Main Authors: Yu, Defu, Zhu, Weiyun, Hang, Suqin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 20-04-2019; MDPI
• Subjects: Amino acids; Biotechnology; Colon; colonic microbiota; Diet; Digestive enzymes; Digestive system; Duodenum; Enzymes; Fatty acids; Fermentation; Gastrin; Ghrelin; gut hormone; Hogs; Hormones; Ingestion; Insulin; Intestinal microflora; intestinal morphology; Intestine; Jejunum; Leptin; Low protein diet; Metabolism; Metabolites; Microbiota; Microorganisms; Morphology; Nitrogen; Nutrient deficiency; pigs; Polypeptides; Proteins; Relative abundance; Somatostatin; Weaning; Palo Alto California; United States > US; China; pigs; low-protein diet; gut hormone; colonic microbiota; intestinal morphology; digestive enzymes
• ISSN: 2076-2615; 2076-2615
• DOI: 10.3390/ani9040180

Using protein-restriction diets becomes a potential strategy to save the dietary protein resources. However, the mechanism of low-protein diets influencing pigs' growth performance is still controversial. This study aimed to investigate the effect of protein-restriction diets on gastrointestinal physiology and gut microbiota in pigs. Eighteen weaned piglets were randomly allocated to three groups with different dietary protein levels. After a 16-week trial, the results showed that feeding a low-protein diet to pigs impaired the epithelial morphology of duodenum and jejunum (
< 0.05) and reduced the concentration of many plasma hormones (
< 0.05), such as ghrelin, somatostatin, glucose-dependent insulin-tropic polypeptide, leptin, and gastrin. The relative abundance of
and
in colon and microbiota metabolites was also decreased by extreme protein-restriction diets (
< 0.05). These findings suggested that long-term ingestion of a protein-restricted diet could impair intestinal morphology, suppress gut hormone secretion, and change the microbial community and fermentation metabolites in pigs, while the moderately low-protein diet had a minimal effect on gut function and did not impair growth performance.