Post-Weaning Diarrhea in Piglets: Causes, Risk Factors, and Management Strategies

Post-weaning diarrhea (PWD) is a major health concern in pig farming, often leading to significant economic losses. This review explores the underlying causes and risk factors associated with PWD in piglets and discusses comprehensive, antibiotic-free strategies for its prevention and control. It further highlights recent findings, prevalence data, diagnostic methods, epidemiological patterns, and management models. Emphasis is placed on environmental, nutritional, and biosecurity interventions aimed at improving piglet resilience during the weaning transition. This vulnerability predisposes piglets to gastrointestinal disorders, especially post-weaning diarrhea (PWD), which remains a leading cause of morbidity, mortality, and economic loss worldwide. Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) infection induced Postweaning diarrhea is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in newly weaned piglets. The main virulence attributes of ETEC are adhesins and enterotoxins, which are mostly regulated on large plasmids. Prevalence found is less than 50% in Australia, Danish, Korea, South Ontario but no prevalence in Africa. According to antibiotic resistance, the researchers experimented, discussed and concluded that the effect of diet transitions, reducing protein levels, digestible fiber support, using probiotics, association organic acid with monogycerid or fatt could contribute or reduce the effects of post weaning diarrhea in piglet. Future research should refine diagnostics, monitor pathogen strains, and quantify long-term impacts of combined interventions via meta-analyses and longitudinal studies.