Blood Sugar Values and Intestine Mucosa Integrity in Suckling Pigs in Relation to their Nutritional Status

Abstract

The experiment included 106 healthy piglets aged 1-14 days and 38 piglets suffering from diarrhoea, aged 1-7 days. The blood sugar was measured with the help of Accu-chek Go (Roche Diagnostics GMBH, Germany) halfway between two sucklings.
Segments with duodenum, jejunum and ileum were harvested from the diarrhoea suffering piglets and coloured HE preparations were examined under a stereoscopic magnifying glass and the microscope.
With healthy piglets, the average blood sugar was of 61.55±10.2 mg %, and after a 12 hour life the blood sugar increased to 96.5±15.50 mg %, with piglets aged 1-7 days, the average blood sugar was of 93.08±3.67 mg %. In piglets suffering from diarrhoea, during their first 12 hours of life, the blood sugar decreased by 22 %, and between 1 and 7 days it decreased by 18.55 % compared to healthy piglets of the same age (p<0,05 for days 2, 3 and 5).
Morphologically, in piglets suffering from diarrhoea, the examination of the small intestine mucosa resulted in: areas of mucosa denudation with villi disappearance, central edema of villi of the jejunum, vascular lesion resulting in the formation of edema in villi and in lamina propria.