Researchers at the University of Delaware are looking into what causes that gut feeling in livestock animals such as cows and chickens.
Ryan Arsenault, assistant professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences in UD's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR), arrived at UD in 2015 and since that time, he has worked to set up a lab looking specifically at the gut health of production livestock animals.
Members of Arsenault's lab -- specifically Bridget Aylward, a doctoral level student in CANR, and Casey Johnson, a Master's level student in CANR -- have presented their findings at international conferences such as the European Symposium on Poultry Nutrition in Spain as well as Keystone conferences in Banff, Canada and Dublin, Ireland.
Arsenault said that gut health is a big topic in agriculture as many researchers are looking for alternatives to antibiotics which are almost all focused on the gut.
"We can't use antibiotics like we used to in food animals," said Arsenault. "Antibiotics have been used in animal agriculture to keep animals disease free and grow larger. In Europe, it's totally gone, has been for years and years, and it's getting pulled more and more from the American market so things like probiotics, pre-biotics, post-biotics, feed additives and feed enzymes, everyone's looking at those as this silver bullet to solve the antibiotic alternative issue."
Many of his research projects are funded by industry and look at mode of action and mechanisms for antibiotic alternatives such as yeast cell wall extracts, feed enzymes and feed modifiers.
The trend towards no-antibiotics basically boils down to two main points: the concerns regarding antibiotic resistance that bacteria develop and the negative perception consumers have with regards to the use of antibiotics in animals.
Arsenault said that the gut is important to understand because it's the center of animal production.
"You need an efficient gut because that's where all the nutrients are absorbed. You're not going to have a growing animal without a functioning healthy gut and it's also the site of entry for a lot of disease causing pathogens," said Arsenault. "It's linked to pretty much every other system. For example, the second most innervated organ in the body besides the brain is the gut."
There is also a huge immune component as more than 50 percent of the immune system is found in the gut.
"The gut is sort of this nexus of everything," said Arsenault. "It's basically your gut microbiota -- the resident commensal bacteria in your gut -- are a big part of being healthy. If you have the 'good' bacteria in your gut, you're more likely to be resistant to infections, your gut's functioning more efficiently, you can maintain a healthier weight. Diseases like Crohn's Disease or Ulcerative colitis are, people think, predominantly microbiota related."
The acquisition of a microbiome as a young chick, baby calf or a baby human has consequences for an entire life span because of how it helps develop an appropriate immune system and an appropriate immune response.
For instance, a lot of allergies and autoimmune diseases are linked to how one acquires a microbiome in infancy.
Arsenault said that his lab is interested in looking into how chickens or cows acquire a healthy or unhealthy microbiome and what signals this is providing to the host animal, which feeds into the probiotics question of what the animals should be fed in order to give them a healthy microbiota so their immune system is optimum and they're absorbing the optimum nutrients.
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