Vitamin E-Selenium Deficiency in Swine: Differential Diagnosis and Nature of Field Problem

Abstract

SUMMARY A vitamin E-selenium deficiency was diagnosed in 37 Michigan swine herds. The deficiency was characterized by sudden deaths in feeder pigs and lesions of hepatic necrosis, icterus, edema, hyalinization of the walls of arterioles, and skeletal and cardiac muscular degeneration. Edema was prominent in most tissues examined, especially in the mesentery of the spiral colon, lungs, subcutaneous tissues, and submucosa of the stomach. The acute death losses due to hepatic necrosis and muscular degeneration discontinued following supplementation of rations with vitamin E, or injections of selenium-vitamin E, or both, in affected herds. In addition, the incidence of the mastitis-metritis-agalactia complex, of spraddle-legged newborn pigs, and of infertility was less than that noticed in previous farrowings.