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Infect Immun, April 1998, p. 1421-1426, Vol. 66, No. 4
Finch University of Health Sciences/The
Chicago Medical School,
Received 10 November 1997/Returned for modification 22 December
1997/Accepted 15 January 1998
The unique germfree, colostrum-deprived, immunologically
"virgin" piglet model was used to evaluate the ability of
lactoferrin (LF) to protect against lethal shock induced by
intravenously administered endotoxin. Piglets were fed LF or bovine
serum albumin (BSA) prior to challenge with intravenous
Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and
temperature, clinical symptoms, and mortality were tracked for 48 h following LPS administration. Prefeeding with LF resulted in a
significant decrease in piglet mortality compared to feeding with BSA
(16.7 versus 73.7% mortality, P < 0.001). Protection
against the LPS challenge by LF was also correlated with both
resistance to induction of hypothermia by endotoxin and an overall
increase in wellness, as quantified by a toxicity score developed for
these studies. In vitro studies using a flow cytometric assay system
demonstrated that LPS binding to porcine monocytes was inhibited by LF
in a dose-dependent fashion, suggesting that the mechanism of LF action
in vivo may be inhibition of LPS binding to monocytes/macrophages and,
in turn, prevention of induction of monocyte/macrophage-derived
inflammatory-toxic cytokines.
0019-9567/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
The Protective Effects of Lactoferrin Feeding
against Endotoxin Lethal Shock in Germfree Piglets

*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology and Immunology, Finch University of Health
Sciences/The Chicago Medical School, 3333 Green Bay Rd., North
Chicago, IL 60064. Phone: (847) 578-3230. Fax: (847) 578-3349. E-mail:
kimy{at}mis.finchcms.edu.
Present address: Department of Anatomy, College of Medicine, Seoul
National University, Seoul, Korea.
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