Oral feeding with L-Glutamine and Nucleotides: impact on some GALT (gut associated lymphoid tissue) parameters and cell proliferation/death rates in weaning piglets

Dietary supplementation with glutamine and nucleotides may be useful during piglets weaning, when a rough passage from milk suckling to a solid feed may cause a strong reduction of the length of intestinal villi height and the depth of the crypts, and consequently of the intestinal digestive and absorptive capacities (Van Beers-Schreurs et al., 1998). Glutamine stimulates cell proliferation and activates protein kinases, suggesting that it could control the regularly alternating cellular apoptosis/proliferation sequence (Rhoads et al., 2000)..