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Neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin

High incidences of pre-weaning mortality continue to limit global sheep production, constituting a major economic and welfare concern. Despite significant advances in genetics, nutrition, and management, the proportion of lamb deaths has remained stable at 15–20% over the past four decades. There is...

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Autores principales: Flinn, Tom, Kleemann, David O., Swinbourne, Alyce M., Kelly, Jennifer M., Weaver, Alice C., Walker, Simon K., Gatford, Kathryn L., Kind, Karen L., van Wettere, William H. E. J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7643391/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33292527
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40104-020-00510-w
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author Flinn, Tom
Kleemann, David O.
Swinbourne, Alyce M.
Kelly, Jennifer M.
Weaver, Alice C.
Walker, Simon K.
Gatford, Kathryn L.
Kind, Karen L.
van Wettere, William H. E. J.
author_facet Flinn, Tom
Kleemann, David O.
Swinbourne, Alyce M.
Kelly, Jennifer M.
Weaver, Alice C.
Walker, Simon K.
Gatford, Kathryn L.
Kind, Karen L.
van Wettere, William H. E. J.
author_sort Flinn, Tom
collection PubMed
description High incidences of pre-weaning mortality continue to limit global sheep production, constituting a major economic and welfare concern. Despite significant advances in genetics, nutrition, and management, the proportion of lamb deaths has remained stable at 15–20% over the past four decades. There is mounting evidence that melatonin can improve outcomes in compromised ovine pregnancies via enhanced uterine bloodflow and neonatal neuroprotection. This review provides an overview of the major risk factors and underlying mechanisms involved in perinatal lamb mortality and discusses the potential of melatonin treatment as a remedial strategy. Supplementing pregnant ewes with melatonin enhances uterine bloodflow and fetal oxygenation, and potentially birthweight and neonatal thermogenic capacity. Melatonin freely crosses the ovine placenta and blood-brain barrier and provides neuroprotection to the fetal lamb during periods of chronic and acute hypoxia throughout gestation, with improved behavioural outcomes in hypoxic neonates. The current literature provides strong evidence that maternal melatonin treatment improves outcomes for lambs which experience compromised in utero development or prolonged parturition, though to date this has not been investigated in livestock production systems. As such there is a clear basis for continued research into the effects of maternal melatonin supplementation during gestation on pre-weaning survival under extensive production conditions.
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spelling pubmed-76433912020-11-06 Neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin Flinn, Tom Kleemann, David O. Swinbourne, Alyce M. Kelly, Jennifer M. Weaver, Alice C. Walker, Simon K. Gatford, Kathryn L. Kind, Karen L. van Wettere, William H. E. J. J Anim Sci Biotechnol Review High incidences of pre-weaning mortality continue to limit global sheep production, constituting a major economic and welfare concern. Despite significant advances in genetics, nutrition, and management, the proportion of lamb deaths has remained stable at 15–20% over the past four decades. There is mounting evidence that melatonin can improve outcomes in compromised ovine pregnancies via enhanced uterine bloodflow and neonatal neuroprotection. This review provides an overview of the major risk factors and underlying mechanisms involved in perinatal lamb mortality and discusses the potential of melatonin treatment as a remedial strategy. Supplementing pregnant ewes with melatonin enhances uterine bloodflow and fetal oxygenation, and potentially birthweight and neonatal thermogenic capacity. Melatonin freely crosses the ovine placenta and blood-brain barrier and provides neuroprotection to the fetal lamb during periods of chronic and acute hypoxia throughout gestation, with improved behavioural outcomes in hypoxic neonates. The current literature provides strong evidence that maternal melatonin treatment improves outcomes for lambs which experience compromised in utero development or prolonged parturition, though to date this has not been investigated in livestock production systems. As such there is a clear basis for continued research into the effects of maternal melatonin supplementation during gestation on pre-weaning survival under extensive production conditions. BioMed Central 2020-11-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7643391/ /pubmed/33292527 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40104-020-00510-w Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Review
Flinn, Tom
Kleemann, David O.
Swinbourne, Alyce M.
Kelly, Jennifer M.
Weaver, Alice C.
Walker, Simon K.
Gatford, Kathryn L.
Kind, Karen L.
van Wettere, William H. E. J.
Neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin
title Neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin
title_full Neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin
title_fullStr Neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin
title_full_unstemmed Neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin
title_short Neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin
title_sort neonatal lamb mortality: major risk factors and the potential ameliorative role of melatonin
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7643391/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33292527
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40104-020-00510-w
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