142 Effects of antibiotics on blood profiles in weanling pigs experimentally infected with a pathogenic E. coli
Abstract The experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of antibiotics on blood profiles and serum inflammatory mediators of weaned pigs experimentally infected with F18 Escherichia coli (E. coli). Twenty-six pigs (6.88 ± 1.03 kg BW) were individually housed in disease containment rooms and randomly allotted to one of three treatments with 8–12 replicate pigs per treatment. The three dietary treatments were control diet and 2 additional diets supplemented with 0.5 or 50 mg/kg carbadox, respectively. The experiment lasted 18 d (7 d before and 11 d after first inoculation [d 0]). F18 E. coli inoculum was daily and orally as 1010 cfu/3 mL for 3 d. Blood samples were collected before E. coli inoculation and on d 2, 5, 8, and 11 post-inoculation (PI). Total and differential blood cell count were analyzed by CBC test. All data were analyzed by ANOVA using PROC MIXED of SAS. Supplementation of low-dose antibiotics had greatest (P < 0.05) neutrophils but lowest (P < 0.05) monocytes on d 2 PI, compared with control and high-dose antibiotics groups. Pigs in the low-dose antibiotics group still had higher (P < 0.05) white blood cell counts and lymphocytes than pigs in the other groups on d 11 PI. In consistent with CBC results, pigs supplemented with low-dose antibiotics had greatest (P < 0.05) serum C-reactive protein on d 2 and 5 PI and serum TNF-α on d 5 PI, compared with pigs in the control and high-dose antibiotics groups. No differences were observed in the red blood cell profiles between pigs in control and low-dose antibiotics groups, whereas supplementation of high-dose antibiotics had lowest (P < 0.05) packed cell volume but highest (P < 0.05) mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration among three treatments. In conclusion, low-dose antibiotic supplementation may exacerbate systemic inflammation caused by F18 E. coli infection.