Decreased amino acid requirements of growing chicks due to immunologic stress

Experiments were conducted to determine the influence of immunologic stress on methionine and lysine requirements of growing chicks. Immunologic stress was elicited by injection of either Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide or heat-killed Staphylococcus aureus every other day for 6 d. In the first experiment, diets were formulated to provide methionine levels of 0.30, 0.50 and 0.70%. In the second experiment, diets contained 0.75, 0.90 or 1.2% lysine. In chicks fed amino acid-sufficient diets, those chicks injected with immunogens had slower growth, lower feed intake and poorer efficiency of feed utilization than those injected with saline. The decreases due to immunogens were diminished in chicks fed amino acid-deficient diets. The methionine requirements of saline- and immunogen-injected chicks were above 0.5% and between 0.3 and 0.5%, respectively; the lysine requirements were greater than 0.95% and between 0.7 and 0.95%, respectively. Thus immunogen injection decreased methionine and lysine requirements, probably because of a decreased need of amino acids for growth and tissue accretion. Immunogen-induced depression in serum zinc and increase in serum copper levels were ameliorated by lysine or methionine deficiencies. Compared with saline-injected chicks, immunogen-injected chicks had significantly higher serum interleukin-1 (IL-1) activity by 53% when fed the methionine-sufficient diet, but they did not have significantly greater IL-1 levels when fed the methionine-deficient diet. These observations indicate that the diminished expression of immunologic stress in amino acid-deficient chicks is due to an impaired immune response.