摘要Weaning stress causes substantial economic loss in the swine industry.Moreover,weaning-induced intestinal barrier damage and dysfunction of the gut-liver axis are associated with reduced growth performance in piglets.Metasilicate-based alkaline mineral water(AMW)has shown potential thera-peutic effects on gastrointestinal disorders;however,the mechanisms involved and their overall effects on the gut-liver axis have not been explored.Here,sodium metasilicate(SMS)was used to prepare metasilicate-based AMW(basal water+500 mg/L SMS).A total of 240 newly weaned piglets were allocated to the Control and SMS groups(6 replicate pens per group and 20 piglets per pen)for a 15-day trial period.Histopathological evaluations were conducted using hematoxylin and eosin staining.To analyze the composition of the gut microbiota,16S rRNA PacBio SMRT Gene Full-Length Sequencing was performed.Western blotting and immunofluorescence were employed to assess protein expression levels.Our results indicated that metasilicate-based AMW effectively alleviated weaning-induced colonic or liver morphological injury and inflammatory response,as well as liver cholesterol metabolism dis-orders.Further analysis showed that metasilicate-based AMW promoted deoxycholic acid(DCA)biosynthesis by increasing the abundance of Lactobacillus_delbrueckii in the colon(P＜0.001).This consequently improved weaning-induced colon and liver injury and dysfunction through the DCA-secondary bile acid(SBA)receptors(SBAR)-nuclear factor-kappaB(NF-κB)/NOD-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing 3(NLRP3)pathways.Growth performance parameters,including final body weight(P=0.034)and average daily gain(P＜0.001),in the SMS group were significantly higher than those in the Control group.Therefore,metasilicate-based AMW maintains gut-liver axis homeostasis by regulating the microbiota-mediated SBA-SBAR pathway in piglets under weaning stress.Our research provides a new strategy for mitigating stress-induced gut-liver axis dysfunction in weaned piglets.