Dietary arginine supplementation altered expression of IGFs and IGF receptors in weaning piglets

Abstract

Early weaning may lead to the stress syndrome and increased occurrence of enteric diseases and diarrhea in nursery pig management. Dietary Arginine supplementation may decrease the severity of the weaned stress syndrome in early-weaned piglets. The insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling pathway is an important regulatory factor in regulating fetal and placental growth, proliferation, differentiation, migration and aggregation, and inhibit apoptosis of mammalian cells. However, whether insulin-like growth factor system expression is changed in piglets with Dietary Arginine supplementation is unclear. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary arginine supplementation in modulation IGF system of weanling piglets. Twelve, 21-day-old healthy piglets (Landrace × Yorkshire) with a mean body weight (BW) were divided into 2 groups randomly. The test group was supplemented with 0.6% L-arginine, the control group was fed with 1.23% L-alanine (isonitrogenous control). At 28 days of age, 12 piglets were killed and longissimus muscle, liver and kidney were collected. IGF-I was increased in three tissues of arginine group (P < 0.05). IGF-II was increased in muscle of arginine group. Both muscle and liver have a higher level of IGFBP5 with arginine supplementation (P < 0.05). These results showed that argi-nine can alleviate weaning stress and improving growth performance in early-weaned piglets through IGFs and IGF receptors.