Immune Response of Piglets Receiving Mixture of Formic and Propionic Acid Alone or with Either Capric Acid or Bacillus Licheniformis after Escherichia coli Challenge

Table 5

Effect of organic acid or organic acid supplemented with either capric acid or Bacillus Licheniformis on interferon-γ (ng/mL) concentration in plasma of pigs challenged with enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli.

Time, h	Treatments					SEM	P-value
	CON	ATB	OA	OA + CRA	OA + PB
0 HPC^1	13.72	14.32	13.01	13.23	12.25	0.85	0.962
9 HPC	24.54	21.40	15.19	17.79	22.70	1.46	0.272
24 HPC	35.26	24.88	17.02	23.51	20.77	1.89	0.033
48 HPC	24.29	16.60	15.70	18.31	18.89	1.31	0.343
96 HPC	22.08	15.38	14.69	14.50	13.62	1.34	0.352
168 HPC	16.54	14.56	12.51	14.25	12.36	1.11	0.809
SEM	1.72	1.74	0.55	1.03	1.32
P-value	<0.001	0.427	0.159	0.027	0.053

CON = basal diet; ATB = basal diet plus antibiotics; OA = basal diet plus 1% organic acid; OA + CRA = basal diet plus 1% organic acid + 0.2% capric; OA + PB = basal diet plus 1% organic acid + 0.02% probiotic (3.3×10⁶ viable spores of Bacillus Licheniformis per gram of feed).
¹ HPC: hours after challenge.
Within per treatment, values at different time points without a common superscript differ significantly at P < 0.05; within per time point, values with different treatments without a common superscript differ significantly at P < 0.05.