Overview
Ebrahimi and colleagues tested whether dietary lead acetate suppresses broiler growth and intestinal nutrient-transporter expression. This is animal-feed toxicology and exposure-pathway evidence, not a supplement or enzyme product occurrence survey. The page records the source’s exact lead-dose, analyzed diet concentration, ingestion, and tissue-retention values while keeping the graphical gene-expression results qualitative where no table values are printed.
Key numbers
- Study animals: 96 one-day-old male Cobb500 broiler chicks, randomized to 2 dietary treatment groups with 6 replicate cages per group.
- Exposure period: 1-21 days.
- Nominal lead treatment: basal diet supplemented with 200 mg lead acetate/kg of diet.
- Analyzed lead (Pb) concentration in diets: 0.155 mg/kg in the control diet and 127 mg/kg in the lead-supplemented diet.
- Daily Pb ingestion estimated by the authors: 6 ug in control birds and 5100 ug in lead-supplemented birds.
- Liver Pb retention at the end of the exposure period: 0.05 mg/kg in control birds and 0.64 mg/kg in lead-supplemented birds.
- Lead exposure significantly suppressed feed intake (Figure 1, P < 0.05), body-weight gain (Figure 2, P < 0.01), and feed efficiency (Figure 3, P < 0.05).
- Jejunum qRT-PCR results: all studied sugar transporters except GLUT5 were significantly downregulated in Pb-exposed chicks; GLUT5 was upregulated (Figure 4, P < 0.01).
- Peptide and amino-acid transporter mRNA expression for PepT1 and EAAT3 was significantly downregulated in Pb-exposed chickens (Figure 5, P < 0.01).
- Antioxidant enzyme mRNA expression increased for SOD and CAT while GST-alpha decreased (Figure 6, P < 0.01).
- Hsp70 mRNA expression was significantly decreased in Pb-exposed birds (Figure 7, P < 0.01).
Methods (brief)
Broilers were assigned to a control basal diet or a basal diet supplemented with lead acetate. The source reports ingredient composition for the basal diet and analyzed the Pb concentration of the two diets. Body weight and feed intake were recorded during the 1-21 day period, and feed efficiency was calculated.
Jejunum samples were collected after the 3-week exposure period. Gene expression for sugar, peptide, and amino-acid transporters, antioxidant enzymes, and Hsp70 was measured by quantitative real-time PCR. GAPDH was used as the endogenous control. Statistical analysis used a two-tailed t-test with unequal group variance, with P < 0.05 as the significance threshold.
Implications
Microbiome: No microbiome findings.
Related evidence
Update history
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