Evaluation of Glutamine Supplementation on Broiler Performance, Intestinal Immune Parameters, and Immunity Acquisition During Experimental Enteric Challenge Models.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Enteric challenges play a significant role in poultry production due to their effects on nutrient digestibility and utilization. Glutamine was traditionally considered as a non-essential amino acid in humans and other animals; however, recent research has begun to provide evidence that glutamine is conditionally essential during times of enteric challenge. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of glutamine supplementation during enteric challenges and immunity acquisition. The first study demonstrated that glutamine supplementation improved intestinal health during an experimental coccidiosis infection through increased tight junction mRNA expression and improved jejunal morphology. The second study demonstrated that serum glutamine concentrations were significantly affected during an experimental necrotic enteritis infection and that glutamine supplementation helped improve serum glutamine concentrations during this time. Supplementation of glutamine at 0.5% increased IL-10 and Claudin-1 mRNA expression, which translated to reduced intestinal permeability. This study also showed that supplementation of glutamine at 0.5% may be beneficial during necrotic enteritis and that supplementation of glutamine at 1.0% negatively affected the bird during infection. The third study demonstrated that glutamine supplementation did not affect fecal oocyst cycling in birds given a non-attenuated coccidiosis vaccine. It was also observed in this study that glutamine supplementation helped reduce the negative effects of challenge in immunized birds through decreasing IFN-γ mRNA expression and increasing IL-10 mRNA expression. This research demonstrates that glutamine supplementation may be beneficial in broilers during times of enteric challenge or immunity acquisition. There is also evidence from this work that glutamine may be a conditionally essential amino acid in broilers, during an enteric challenge.