Ebrahimi et al. 2015 - Dietary lead effects on broiler intestinal transporters

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 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

Certification: This paper should not enter any consumer-product occurrence pool. It is a controlled animal toxicology study using lead acetate in feed, with measured Pb in diet and liver as exposure-confirmation endpoints.

Courses: Useful for teaching why animal-feed contamination is a supply-chain and toxicology concern even when the paper does not measure finished poultry meat.

App: Supports exposure-context language for lead in animal feed and livestock physiology, but not product-specific scoring for poultry foods.

Microbiome: No microbiome findings.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• lead
• index

Verification notes

• DOI, title, authors, journal, license, animal count, treatment groups, nominal dose, analyzed diet Pb concentrations, daily ingestion estimates, liver Pb retention, qRT-PCR target classes, and figure significance statements were transcribed from the extracted PDF text.
• Units are preserved as the source reports them: mg/kg for diet and liver Pb and ug for daily Pb ingestion.
• Figure bar heights for feed intake, body-weight gain, feed efficiency, and fold-change expression were not converted into numerical values because the extracted text does not print exact bar values.
• Products and ingredients are intentionally empty because the paper is a spiked-feed toxicology study, not an occurrence survey of poultry meat, supplements, or enzymes.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.