Maybe it’s just me, but it seems only fitting for a Midwesterner to talk about research with pigs. I have something to confess, though: I’m from the Illinois suburbs. I can’t recall ever meeting a real pig, and most of what I know of them is from reading stories and watching television. On the page and screen, they’re smelly and wallow in the mud. In the Peanuts comic strip, there’s a character named Pigpen who walks around in a perpetual dust storm. Pigs are synonymous with greed and gluttony – in the animated movie Spirited Away, the main character’s parents are turned into pigs for chowing down on food that isn’t meant for them.
But pigs don’t deserve the bum rap they have in our culture. Actually, piglets may be helping your children become smarter.
For ethical reasons, human infants aren’t used in studies of their brain when the study involves extracting and examining brain tissue. So animal models can serve as a substitute for research that benefits infants.
For instance, researchers at the University of Illinois (U of I) are learning more about infant brain development by studying piglets.
The piglet model is a good choice because human brains and piglet brains experience similar growth spurts after birth, albeit pigs’ development occurs in a shorter period of time.
Recently the U of I published a study showing that a combination of chemicals mimicking those found in breast milk had a noticeable effect on the part of the brain called the internal capsule, which matures after birth. This finding suggests that those piglets were more developmentally advanced than piglets which didn’t receive the combination of chemicals. It also gave definitive evidence that even after birth, and not just during pregnancy, nutrition plays an important role in neurodevelopment.
However, pigs aren’t just an important model for neurodevelopment.
In fact, nutritionist Harry Dawson of the Agricultural Research Service’s Beltsville Human Nutrition Center in Maryland has helped develop and maintain the Porcine Translational Research Database. This database contains information on genes and proteins. Through comparative analysis, Dawson has found that humans share more immune-system related genes and proteins with pigs than they do with mice.
This can be especially useful when studying infectious diseases, like staph infections and classical swine fever virus, which shares characteristics of hemorrhagic fevers not only in pigs, but in humans. By observing the way the virus interacts with antigen cells, researchers could uncover new ways to treat patients afflicted with hemorrhagic fevers.
They’ve also been integral for research of respiratory infections as well as gastrointestinal infections.
One of the major public health threats in the US today is obesity. Pigs are invaluable for researching this condition which leads to diabetes, heart disease and other potentially deadly diseases. Both humans and pigs are omnivores, have similar sized organs and similar body fat distribution.
In 2013, Kati Hanhineva, an adjunct professor with the University of Eastern Finland worked with Gloria Solano-Aguilar, a microbiologist with the Agricultural Research Service, to study metabolic changes in pig organs and biofluids when the pigs ate a high-fat diet. They observed dramatic changes in the way the tissue metabolized fat.
Given the research and discoveries involving pigs, perhaps it’s time to stop dissing the swine. Sure, they like to roll in the mud to keep cool and maybe their table manners aren’t the best, but the knowledge gained from these animals has the potential to help a lot of people.
Thanks for your article Susan! Animals deserve our respect for all the help they give us in research and in the medical field, including pigs. It reminded me of the days when I worked at the University of Cincinnati in the department of Physiology and Biophysics at my first job. Pigs are an excellent model as you described above and we also used cows too. Granted we obtained their hearts from a local slaughter house but none the less they are as you said invaluable in research. Thank you, Anastasia Kokkinakis
All of my graduate research was done using pigs for gastrointestinal and metabolic models that pertain to both human and animal health. They are great!
I have had the fortune of working with pigs over my forty years in research. Pigs are very smart, respond well to task training and become easy to work with when treated with kindness and routine. Our last project on pigs, we handled 160 pound animals. We started task training with commands as the animals were off loaded. As our trust relationship with the animals grew, we gave them more freedom. Part of their daily routine was to be allowed to explore the holding room and play with toys. The pigs took to lapping the room much as a dog would. Their facial expressions could only be explained as joyful. Their exuberance at times bordered on total lack of control. Pigs require large square footage housing, but are clean animals if given the option. If support staff are properly trained in care and handling of pigs, the pigs are as easy as any other research model.
Let’s also remember the hundreds of thousands of patients walking around with porcine heart valves. The fact that pig organs are approximately the same size as human organs is really important to those patients who’s heart valves failed and yet they are NOT on anticoagulant therapy as is required when mechanical valves are used.