XiaoHan Zhang ^1,2* LanYuan Sun ² MengJun Wu ² Yu Chenmin ² Di Zhao ² Lei Wang ² Zhengfan Zhang ² Dan Yi ² Yongqing Hou ² Tao Wu ^2*

• ¹ Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan, China
• ² Hubei Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition and Feed Science, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

The present study aimed to explore the effect of dietary with Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG powder (LGG) on intestinal and liver damage in broiler chickens challenged by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). A total of 100 healthy 1-day-old Ross 308 broiler chickens were selected and randomly divided into 2 treatments: the control group and the LGG treatment group. There were five replicates for each group, with 10 chickens per replicate. The chickens in the control group were fed a basal diet, while LGG treatment was the basal diet supplemented with 1000 mg/kg LGG. The experiment lasted 29 days and the trial included two phases. During the first 27 days, the animals were weighed on the 14th and 27th days to calculate growth performance.Then, on day 29, 2 animals from each replicate were intraperitoneally injected with 1 mg/kg BW LPS, and another 2 animals were treated with an equal volume of saline.The chickens were slaughtered 3 hours later for sampling and further analysis. 1)LGG addition to the diet did not affect growth performance, including average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI) and feed to weight ratio (F/G) of broiler chickens; 2) LPS stimulation decreased villus height (VH), and caused oxidative stress and increased the amount of diamine oxidase (DAO) in plasma, and the relative expression of intestinal inflammation genes (interleukin-8 (IL-8), interleukin 1β (IL-1β), inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α)) and the relative expression of liver injury genes (b-cell lymphoma 2 (BCL2), heat shock protein70 (HSP70), and matrix metallopeptidase 13 (MMP13)). 3) Supplementation of LGG increased VH, and the relative expression of intestinal barrier genes (mucins 2 (Mucin2) and occludin (Occludin)), and decreased the amount of DAO in plasma and the relative expression of intestinal inflammatory factors (IL-8, iNOS and IL-1β).LGG supplementation also increased the expression of liver injury-related genes (MMP13 and MMP9). In conclusion, LGG enhanced intestinal barrier function, improve intestinal morphology, and alleviated the inflammatory response of intestines in LPS-stimulated broiler chicken, and have a slightly protective effect on liver damage.