Supplemental Zinc Reduced Intestinal Permeability

The present study was conducted to evaluate the pharmacological effect of Zn in diarrhoea in relation to intestinal permeability.

Tight junctions are one of the most important components of the intestinal mucosal barrier against macromolecular transmission. They are made up of a complex of integral membrane proteins, which are tethered to cytoplasmic plaque proteins. An increase in intestinal permeability induced by weaning might be attributed to the alterations of tight junction protein expression. Therefore, it would be of interest to examine whether supplementation of pharmacological levels of Zn modulates the expression of tight junction proteins. The purpose of the present experiment was to evaluate the beneficial role of pharmacological levels of Zn for post-weaning diarrhoea, intestinal permeability and expression of tight junction proteins, mainly occludin, zonula occludens protein-1 (ZO-1) and claudin-1.

Therefore a total of seventy-two piglets weaned at 24 d, were allocated to three dietary treatments: (1) control diet without supplemental Zn; (2) control diet supplemented with 2000 mg Zn/kg from ZnO; (3) control diet supplemented with 2000 mg Zn/kg from tetrabasic zinc chloride (TBZC). At the end of a 14 d experiment period, piglets were weighed, feed consumption was measured, and mucosal barrier function was determined using the lactulose/mannitol test. Expression of mucosal tight junction protein was measured at RNA and protein level.