Dietary supplementation with Bacillus-based probiotic improves gut health in the weaned piglets challenged by...

As probiotics, Bacillus strains may regulate some physiological functions in animals. This study aimed to evaluate whether dietary supplementation with a Bacillus-based probiotic could alleviate gut damage induced by rotavirus (RV) infection in piglets. Twenty-four piglets were randomly assigned into 2 groups fed with the basal diet (n = 16) and the diet containing 10⁹ colony-forming unit Bacillus spores/kg (n = 8). On d 8, 8 piglets fed with the diet supplemented with Bacillus-based probiotic and 8 piglets fed with basal diet were orally infused with RV, while the residue piglets had oral gavage of sterile essential medium. The trial duration was 12 d.

RV challenge induced diarrhea, significantly destroyed the morphology of jejunal mucosa (P < 0.05), significantly increased RV-antibody and RV non-structural protein 4 of jejunal mucosa (P < 0.05), significantly impaired antioxidant capacity (including malondialdehyde level, total antioxidant capacity and catalase activity), immunity (such as interleukin 2, interleukin 4 and secreted immunoglobulin A levels), mucins and the mRNA expression of tight-junction-related (such as Zonula occludens 1, occludin) and apoptotic-related (including B-cell lymphoma/leukaemia-2-associated X protein, B cell lymphoma/leukaemia-2, cysteinyl aspartate specific proteinases) genes of jejunal mucosa (P < 0.05), and, to some extents, affected the bacteria community structure and abundance of ileal digesta in piglets. However, Bacillus-based probiotic administration could significantly attenuate the negative effects of RV infection on gut health of piglets (P < 0.05).

These findings suggested that supplementing Bacillus-based probiotic in the diet could decrease diarrhea rate, and improve gut health in weaned piglets, which was associated with regulating intestinal antioxidant capacity, apoptosis, and microbiota.