Background: Many reports showed that grass-endophyte symbiosis induced livestock poisoned. Yet, there is no\nstudy evaluating clinical symptoms and physiological parameters in sheep fed Epichlo�« gansuensis endophyte-infected\ngrass. The objective of the present study was to investigate these indexes by feeding sheep with endophyte-infected\nA. inebrians (E+ Group) or endophyte-free A. inebrians (E- Group) drunken horse grass or alfalfa hay (Control Group).\nResults: The Epichlo�« endophyte caused obvious toxicity symptoms in the sheep fed E+ A. inebrians, with 1 of\nthe 5 sheep having died by the 35th day. The feed intake and body weight gain of the E+ Group were significantly\nless than the E- and control groups (P < 0.05). Serum concentrations of alanine aminotransferase (ALT, 45.5 mmol/L)\nand aspartate aminotransferase for the E+ group (AST, 139.3 mmol/L) were significantly (P < 0.05) greater than for\nthe E- (ALT, 31.2 mmol/L; AST, 78.6 mmol/L) and control (ALT, 32.6 mmol/L; AST, 56.6 mmol/L) groups at the fifth\nweek; serum concentration of creatinine for the E+ group (63.8 mmol/L) was also significantly (P < 0.05) greater than for\nE- (56.6 mmol/L) and control groups (58.5 mmol/L). Meanwhile, urine biochemical indices for the E+ group indicated that\nketone and occult blood were significantly (P < 0.05) elevated compared to the other groups while urine pH values were\nsignificantly (P < 0.05) acidic. The relative weight of heart, brain, liver, lung and kidney for Group E+ were almost two fold\nmore than the other groups, but uterus weight was about half that found for Group E- or Control.\nConclusions: We conclude that the Epichlo�« endophyte infection is the cause of A. inebrians toxicity to sheep. Interestingly,\nnone of the measured parameters differed significantly between E- and the control groups, which implied that drunken\nhorse grass could be utilized efficiently by sheep when not infected by the Epichlo�« endophyte.
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