The selenium effect: Immunity in pets

As much as we try to keep our pets healthy and protect them from illness, they can still get sick. Luckily, much like ours, your pet’s body has a built-in line of defense to fight pathogens that cause illness. Optimal selenium nutrition can help strengthen these defenses and enable your pet to fight its best battle against disease.

What happens when your pet is infected by a virus?

When your pet is exposed to a virus, their body launches a series of defense mechanisms that make up the immune system response. The immune system is responsible for identifying foreign intruders called pathogens that can cause disease and mounting a defense against them before they can make your pet sick. The immune system has two main components: the innate and the adaptive immune systems. The innate immune system is the first line of defense and includes barriers like skin and non-specific immune cells like macrophages, whose sole purpose is to attack at the site of infection. This general, non-specific immune response is a rapid onset, taking only a few hours.

But what happens if this isn’t enough and the virus or pathogen continues to infect? This is where the adaptive immune response kicks in. The components of this part of the immune system remain quiet until they are activated and adapt to the presence of the virus. The adaptive immune system is comprised of humoral, mediated by antibodies produced by B cells, and cell-mediated response, mediated by T cells. B cells make special proteins called antibodies that locate the virus and help the body destroy them. T cells, on the other hand, take a less direct route and form helper T cells and killer T cells. Killer T cells find and destroy viral-infected cells, while helper T cells coordinate the effort. The cells are destroyed and viral shedding to other cells is reduced.

To better help your pet during subsequent exposure, components of the adaptive immune system can produce memory cells. These cells “remember” the pathogen so when the same pathogen infects your pet again, the response is faster and stronger. The challenge with some viruses is that they mutate, causing small changes that make it so your pet’s body doesn’t recognize it as the same pathogen.

What role can organic selenium play in your pet’s health?  

Selenium is an essential trace mineral that is required in the diet of animals. Once consumed, selenium is incorporated into a family of proteins called selenoproteins. Selenoproteins are expressed in almost all tissues of the body and have vital biological roles. Selenoproteins function in hormone metabolism, redox regulation and antioxidant defenses. Selenium can be found in the diet in two primary forms: inorganic (a salt form) and organic (selenium yeasts).

You may wonder how your pet’s immune system, viruses and selenium relate. Selenium has two roles: maintaining proper function and strength of the immune system, and counteracting the oxidative damage associated with infection.

In chickens, selenium can reduce viral shedding and increase the expression of important anti-viral genes like interferons. In horses, selenium increases the expression of cytokines in immune cells. This link between selenium status and innate immune system function becomes clearer when you look at studies using selenium-deficient animals. These animals not only have higher pathogen loads, but they have reduced numbers of immune cells. The cells that are present do not function as properly as those of a normal animal. Luckily, these problems can be reversed simply by adding selenium back to the animal’s diet. At the adaptive immunity level, selenium can improve antibody production by B cells and accelerate T cell proliferation and total numbers.

Conclusion

A healthy immune system is your pet’s first line of defense against sickness and disease. If you remember when you were little, your mom might have said you have to “feed a cold.” While it might have sounded silly at the time, she wasn’t far off. Proper nutrition, especially selenium, is essential to make sure your body can fight off viral infections. The same is true for your dog or cat. No one likes when their pet gets sick, so ensuring they are eating a healthy diet containing optimal levels of selenium can help prevent this.

Sel-Plex^® is Alltech’s proprietary organic form of selenium yeast and is manufactured to mimic what is found in nature. Click here to learn more about Sel-Plex.

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