Young Innovators: USask researcher develops tool to protect the gut health of dairy cows

But one University of Saskatchewan (USask) researcher is turning the attention towards dairy cows, showing us just how important gut health is to their overall wellbeing.

Claire Bertens, a graduate student in the University of Saskatchewan’s (USask) College of Agriculture and Bioresources, is looking to understand how environmental and nutritional stressors affect the gut barrier of dairy cows. Growing up on a dairy farm outside of Olds, Alberta, Bertens was raised with a love for dairy cows. Developing a passion for the dairy industry as a child ultimately helped inspire her research career.

“My PhD research focuses on understanding how stressors like heat stress, illness and reduced feed intake affect the integrity of the gut barrier in lactating dairy cows”, said Bertens. “My goal is to identify nutritional strategies that can prevent or mitigate this condition.”

A leaky gut essentially means that bacteria can move or “leak” from the digestive tract into the bloodstream, causing inflammation and a whole host of potential problems.

But assessing leaky gut in cattle can be a challenge for researchers. A cow’s digestive tract contains both the rumen, one of the “forestomach” compartments, and the intestines. Bertens said that it’s often difficult to track down the origin of increased leakiness with currently available techniques. To address this, she has developed a new approach called the dual permeability marker technique.

“This technique allows us to differentiate leakiness in the intestines from the total gastrointestinal tract which helps us pinpoint both the source of the leak and the stressor that may be behind it,” said Bertens. “We found that heat stress and periods of low feed intake primarily increases the leakiness in the intestines.”

Bertens is part of Dr. Greg Penner (PhD) research team, focused on cattle nutrition, nutritional physiology and gut function. Penner is the Centennial Enhancement Chair in Ruminant Nutritional Physiology at USask.

A large part of Bertens’ research centers around strategies to prevent or help leaky gut. She’s discovered that nutritional strategies like dietary buffer supplements may be quite effective. For example, Bertens found that feeding dairy cows calcium-magnesium carbonate, a substance similar to antacids that humans take for heartburn, reduced the leakiness of the intestines during heat stress.

Over the course of her research, Bertens discovered a surprising finding between leaky gut and another inflammatory condition common among dairy cows – mastitis or inflammation of the udder.

“We found that gut leakiness decreased when we induced mammary inflammation which raises new questions about cross-organ interactions during disease states,” said Bertens.

Bertens and her team are currently using the dual permeability marker technique to explore this question further, applying the tool to study other diseases which can further explore the interactions between the gut and other organ systems, such as the lungs.

Bertens is hopeful that her research can be used to help answer longstanding questions about gut barrier function during a variety of different stressors, offering researchers new ways to investigate gut health and develop new nutritional interventions.

“These advances benefit dairy producers by promoting solutions for healthier, more resilient animals and improving productivity. They also benefit consumers by supporting the Canadian dairy industry’s mandate to prioritize animal health and welfare, helping to continue providing safe and nutritious dairy food products to Canadian consumers,” said Bertens.

As she prepares to defend her PhD dissertation, Bertens continues to be inspired by the industry and is hopeful that her work can help provide practical, research-based solutions for producers.

“We hope to adapt the dual permeability marker technique for on-farm use so producers, nutritionists, and veterinarians can diagnose suspected leaky gut more easily and apply appropriate treatment strategies and evaluate their effectiveness,” said Bertens.