Dietary bile acids supplementation improves the growth performance and alleviates fatty liver in broilers fed a high-fat diet via improving the gut microbiota.

This experiment aims to evaluate the effect of bile acids (BAs) in alleviating fatty liver disease induced by a high-fat diet (HFD) in broilers, and the modulation of the gut microbiota involved in this process. A total of 192 one-day-old Arbor Acres (AA) commercial male broilers were randomly divided into 4 groups and treated with the following diet: a basal-fat diet (BFD), a basal-fat diet plus bile acids (BFD + BAs), an HFD, and a high-fat diet plus bile acids (HFD + BAs). Bile acids were supplemented at the early growth stage (3-7 d), middle stage (17-21 d), and late stage (31-35 d). Results showed that BAs treatment had a significant effect on body weight on 14 d and 35 d, and increased the breast muscle weight and its index, but decreased the liver weight and abdominal fat weight on 35 d (P < 0.05). The supplementation of BAs significantly improved the serum lipid profile and decreased the level of triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (TCHO), and nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA) on 35 d (P < 0.05). Dietary BAs supplementation significantly alleviated the hepatic TG deposition induced by HFD (P < 0.05), which was accompanied by upregulation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) gene expression (P < 0.05). Moreover, the expression levels of hepatic gene adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (PPARα), and apolipoprotein B (APOB) were greatly increased by BAs treatment. The analysis of 16S rRNA sequencing showed that the microbial diversity of the cecal digesta was increased by BAs in broilers with elevated abundances of Firmicutes, Lactobacillus, Anaerostipes, Sellimonas, and CHKCI002 and decreased abundances of Barnesiella and Akkermansia genus (P < 0.05). Hepatic TG content was positively correlated with the abundance of Oscillospiraceae, but it was negatively correlated with the abundance of Lactobacillus in cecal digesta (P < 0.05). These results indicate that dietary BAs can improve growth performance and alleviate fatty liver disease induced by an HFD via modulating gut microbiota in broilers.