AB Vista has welcomed the publication of a new peer-reviewed research paper; ‘Stimbiotic supplementation improved performance and reduced inflammatory response via stimulating fibre fermenting microbiome in weaner pigs housed in a poor sanitary environment and fed an antibiotic-free low zinc oxide diet’.

The study investigated whether the inclusion of a stimbiotic can improve performance, influence intestinal microbiota and fermentation activity, and reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines in piglets compared to fructo-oligosaccharide and mannan-oligosaccharide when housed either in good sanitary or poor sanitary environments.

The study results indicate that the stimbiotic shifted the intestinal microbiome to favour fibre fermentation which likely contributed to reduced inflammatory response and improved performance in good and bad sanitary condition even compared with the other additives tested.

Dr Gemma González, AB Vista’s Research Manager and one of the paper’s authors, says: “We are very pleased with the outcome of this research. As a stimbiotic, Signis stimulates the microbiome to ferment fibre, increasing  nutrient digestibility and enabling the fermentation of fibre sources that would otherwise be undegraded. Unlike prebiotics which are utilised as a substrate for bacteria, stimbiotics act as signalling molecules for specific groups of beneficial bacteria, they are supplemented at the range of g per tonne rather than kg per tonne in the case of prebiotics”

The paper was written by representatives of Chungnam National University, Daejeon, South Korea; Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain, and AB Vista, and published by PLOS ONE.