Consequences of inflammation and infection on amino acid requirements and metabolism in pigs

Abstract

Metabolic changes associated with inflammatory processes or infectious diseases can modify protein and amino acid requirements. In these cases, amino acids are redistributed away from growth processes towards tissues involved in inflammatory or immune response. There, they are used for synthesis of inflammatory and immune proteins. The different amino acid composition of immune or inflammatory proteins induces specific requirements. For example, during sepsis, cysteine requirement is increased in humans and animals in order to maintain glutathion synthesis. In pigs, limited experimental data are available to establish a specific amino acid requirement during immune challenge. Lysine is probably not a limiting amino acid for the immune response whereas dietary threonine content influences plasma immunoglobulin concentrations. Finally, an adequate amino acid supply could allow to preserve the growth performance of pigs during an immune challenge.