ArticleScientific reports2022
Predictive blood biomarkers of sheep pregnancy and litter size.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Integrated single-cell and metabolomic profiling identifies ovarian metabolic differences and endothelial heterogeneity associated with litter-size variation in Hu sheep.Journal of animal science and biotechnology · 2026Article
- Integrative Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Analysis Reveal Mechanisms Underlying Differential Fecundity in Yangtze River Delta White Goat.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Serum metabolomics reveals stage-dependent metabolic transitions during CIDR-PGFFrontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Early pregnancy detection in ruminants: challenges and innovations.The Journal of reproduction and development · 2025Review
- Candidate serum metabolite biomarkers of subclinical Haemonchus contortus infection in sheep.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- On-farm welfare assessment of semi-extensively managed sheep using Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) protocol.Archives animal breeding · 2025Article
- Application of Pan-Omics Technologies in Research on Important Economic Traits for Ruminants.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Integration of multi-omics reveals the important role of the BBS10 gene in reproduction.Journal of animal science · 2024Article
- Blood Metabolites and Faecal Microbial Communities in Nonpregnant and Early Gestation Ewes in Highly Cold Areas.Biology · 2023Article
- Early Pregnancy Markers in the Serum of Ewes Identified via Proteomic and Metabolomic Analyses.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Exploration of urinary metabolite dynamicity for early detection of pregnancy in water buffaloes.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Early detection of sheep pregnancy and the prediction of how many lambs a pregnant ewe delivers affects sheep farmers in a number of ways, most notably with regard to feed management, lambing rate, and sheep/lamb health. The standard practice for direct detection of sheep pregnancy and litter size (PLS) is ultrasonography. However, this approach has a number of limitations. Indirect measurement of PLS using blood biomarkers could offer a simpler, faster and earlier route to PLS detection. Therefore, we undertook a large-scale metabolomics study to identify and validate predictive serum biomarkers of sheep PLS. We conducted a longitudinal experiment that analyzed 131 serum samples over five timepoints (from seven days pre-conception to 70 days post-conception) from six commercial flocks in Alberta and Ontario, Canada. Using LC-MS/MS and NMR, we identified and quantified 107 metabolites in each sample. We also identified three panels of serum metabolite biomarkers that can predict ewe PLS as early as 50 days after breeding. These biomarkers were then validated in separate flocks consisting of 243 animals yielding areas-under-the-receiver-operating-characteristic-curve (AU-ROC) of 0.81-0.93. The identified biomarkers could lead to the development of a simple, low-cost blood test to measure PLS at an early stage of pregnancy, which could help optimize reproductive management on sheep farms.
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