The intestinal villus height and crypts depth are known to correlate with the number and maturation rate of intestinal
villus epithelial cells (Pluske et al., 1996b). Intestinal villus atrophy means the number of mature small intestinal villus
epithelial cells decreases, and the deepening of crypts means the growth of small intestinal villus epithelial cells is slowed.
Therefore, small intestinal villus atrophy or crypts deepening shows that the absorption ability of small intestine to nutrient
has been decreased (Diao et al., 2014). In our study, the ratio of villus height to crypt depth in duodenum increased in EFMD
(Table 7). Unfortunately, the large SEM values limited the significance in villus height of duodenum, jejunum and ileum in
EFMD compared with in Control and SDPPD. But such results imply that EFMD may alleviate intestinal stress by maintaining
or improving small intestinal morphology to enhance the absorption ability.