Abstract
Infectious and inflammatory conditions are common especially in growing pigs. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is an important antigenic structure of Gram-negative bacteria and can be used to induce inflammation experimentally. As pigs are usually group-housed in commercial conditions, it is difficult to detect sick individuals, particularly at an early stage of illness. Acute phase proteins such as haptoglobin (Hp) are known indicators of an activated innate immune system whereas adenosine deaminase (ADA) is a relatively novel inflammatory biomarker in pigs. Both parameters can be measured in saliva and could be used as indicators of inflammation. Compared with blood sampling, saliva sampling is a less stressful procedure that is rapid, non-invasive and easy to perform both at group and at individual level. In this blinded randomized clinical trial, 32 female pigs at their post-weaning phase were allocated to one of four treatments comprising two injections of the following substance combinations: saline-saline (SS), ketoprofen-saline (KS), saline-LPS (SL), and ketoprofen-LPS (KL). First, ketoprofen or saline was administered intramuscularly on average 1 h before either LPS or saline was given through an ear vein catheter. In all groups, saliva was collected prior to injections (baseline) and at 4, 24, 48, and 72 h post-injection for determination of ADA, Hp, and cortisol concentrations. A multivariate model was applied to describe the dynamics of each biomarker. Pairwise relationships between ADA, Hp, and cortisol responses from baseline to 4 h post-injection within the SL group were studied with Spearman correlations. A significant increase in the SL group was seen in all biomarkers 4 h post-injection compared to baseline and other time points (pairwise comparisons, p < 0.01 for all) and ketoprofen alleviated the LPS effect. We found a significant positive correlation between ADA and Hp within the SL group (r = 0.86, p < 0.05). The primary and novel findings of the present study are the response of ADA to LPS, its time course and alleviation by ketoprofen. Our results support the evidence that ADA and Hp can be used as inflammatory biomarkers in pigs. We suggest further studies to be conducted in commercial settings with larger sample sizes.