Early-life feeding accelerates gut microbiome maturation in piglets

Abstract

Early-life microbiome perturbations have been suggested to have important effects on host development, physiology, and behaviour, which can persist throughout life. We hypothesise that early feeding (access to a pre-weaning fibrous diet) can affect gut microbiome colonisation and development in neonatal piglets. In this longitudinal study, a customised fibrous diet was provided to early-fed piglets (EF; 6 litters) starting two days after birth until weaning (28 days of age) in addition to mother milk, whereas control piglets (CON; 4 litters) suckled sow milk only. Rectal swabs were collected at multiple timepoints until six weeks of age (i.e., 2 weeks post-weaning) to investigate intestinal microbiota composition development over time using 16S rRNA gene profiling (n = 10 piglets per treatment). We observed a dynamic intestinal microbiota colonisation pattern during the pre-weaning period in both treatment groups, which rapidly stabilised within 2 weeks post-weaning. The microbial (alpha) diversity increased with age and seemed to reach a plateau in the early post-weaning time-point (day+5). The homogenous post-weaning microbiota was represented by microbial groups including Prevotella, Roseburia, Faecalibacterium, Ruminococcus, Megasphaera, Catenibacterium and Subdoligranulum. Remarkably, early feeding of neonatal piglets resulted in accelerated maturation of the intestinal microbiota at pre-weaning time-points, characterised by increased rate of microbial diversity and expanded colonisation of typical post-weaning associated microbial groups (mentioned above) at pre-weaning stages. The acceleration in EF piglets was illustrated by the simultaneous emergence of typical post-weaning-associated microbial groups and a more rapid decline of typical early-life/pre-weaning microbial genera. In addition, the individual eating behaviour scores of the piglets quantitatively correlated with the accelerated change of their microbiome. Overall, these findings show the importance of early-life nutritional strategies to influence the gut microbiota maturation in piglets.

Weaning differentially affects the maturation of piglet peripheral blood and jejunal Peyer’s patches

“…On the contrary, in post-weaning pigs, it is also the small intestine which is impacted more by the relevant amount of solid feed, and the continuous influx of new bacteria from feed and from newly encountered piglets in the pen. In addition, the shift from a milk to a plant-based diet was accomplished by higher relative quantities of fibrolytic and/or short chain fatty acid producer bacterial groups, such as Ruminococcus , Methanobrevibacter , Blautia and Subdoligranulum , as also evidenced in several other studies 9 , 48 . These microorganisms are generally associated with the hindgut; however, fermentative activity also takes place in the distal small intestine, as indicated by classical studies regarding the quantification of the entity of the short chain fatty acids produced in the different digestive tracts 49 .…”

“…However, these studies mainly regarded faecal microbiota. Faeces represent almost the entire hindgut bacterial community which could potentially be less stable in the late suckling period in which the creep feed intake is variable between individuals, determining a variable adaptation of the microbiota 48 . Conversely, milk intake maintains a more stable microbiota in the small intestine 48 .…”

“…Faeces represent almost the entire hindgut bacterial community which could potentially be less stable in the late suckling period in which the creep feed intake is variable between individuals, determining a variable adaptation of the microbiota 48 . Conversely, milk intake maintains a more stable microbiota in the small intestine 48 . On the contrary, in post-weaning pigs, it is also the small intestine which is impacted more by the relevant amount of solid feed, and the continuous influx of new bacteria from feed and from newly encountered piglets in the pen.…”

Fibre supplementation to pre‐weaning piglet diets did not improve the resilience towards a post‐weaning enterotoxigenic E. coli challenge

“…Largely based on data in post‐weaning pigs, dietary fibre in the pre‐weaning diet may theoretically affect the resilience after weaning through at least three mechanisms. Firstly, the developing and more milk‐oriented microbiota of the newborn pig may be stimulated to become fibrolytic, that is shift their populations and adapt their metabolic toolset to be capable of breaking down complex polysaccharides present in plant cell walls (Frese et al, 2015; Choudhury et al, 2020; Vo et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2016). In a previous study, we reported that dietary fibre enriched creep feed was able to stimulate large intestinal volatile fatty acids (VFA; Van Hees et al., 2019).…”

A window of opportunity : Modulation of the porcine gut microbiota and immune system by feed additives in early life

“…For example, faecal samples from β-glucans treated animals showed a minor but significant (p = 0.04) reduction in alpha diversity when only pre-weaning samples were included (Chapter 3, Figure 2B). This reduction was unexpected as β-glucans consist of dietary fibers that are generally known to contribute to microbiota richness [184,275]. An overall reduced alpha diversity as seen for yeast-derived β-glucans is generally considered unfavorable since several studies have suggested that a diverse human gut microbiome is a healthy one [276,277].…”