Abstract
The study was conducted in order to investigate the immuno-enhancing property of the Chinese herbal formula, Gan lian Yu ping feng powder. Three hundred and thirty six 45-day-old chicks were randomly divided into eight groups. The chicks in groups A, B, C were orally given 0.25 g/mL (low-), 0.5 g/mL (middle-) and 1.0 g/mL (high) dose of Gan lian Yu ping feng powder in the drinking water respectively for 3 days consecutively. They were then immunised with infectious laryngotracheitis vaccine (ILTV) on the 4th day. Groups D, E, F were given 0.25 g/mL, 0.5 g/mL and 1.0 g/mL dose of Gan lian Yu ping feng powder respectively after the immunisation for three days consecutively. Group G was Wen du qing (a government approved herbal product for ILT) control group, and group H was blank control group. At 52, 59, 73, 87 days of age, 8 chicks of each group were selected randomly for blood sampling to determine the levels of IFN-γ, IL-4 and the antibody of ILT. Then the chickens were sacrificed, with the thymus, spleen and Bursa of Fabricius being weighed for the calculation of immune organ indexes. The results showed that high and middle dosages of Gan lian Yu ping feng powder given at the day before immunisation and 3 days after immunisation elevated not only the contents of IFN-γ, the antibody titers of ILT (P<0.01) and the immune organ indexes (P<0.05) significantly, but also reduced the contents of IL-4. There was a significantly different degree of enhancement in the content of IFN-γ, the antibody of ILT (P<0.01) and the immune organ index (P<0.05). The results indicate that Gan lian Yu ping feng powder effectively improves the immunity in chickens.
Highlights
With the fast growing poultry farming industry, infectious diseases break out more often than ever before (Ren et al, 2007)
The results strongly suggest that the herbal formula has a positive impact on the antibody production of the birds
The level of antibody titers is an index for humoral immunity
Summary
With the fast growing poultry farming industry, infectious diseases break out more often than ever before (Ren et al, 2007). Vaccination in controlling the infectious diseases is often applied and usually effective. There have been increasing failure reports with vaccination because of changing strains of the pathogenic organisms (Ren et al, 2007; Cheng et al, 2011), short duration of antibody existence, as well as poor cellular immunity (Sun et al, 2006). Lots of studies have demonstrated that Chinese herbal medicines possess immuno-enhancing properties (Xu et al, 2010; Xu et al.,2011; Wang et al, 2012) and are playing a novel role in preventing and controlling various diseases of domestic animals and fowls, including infectious diseases (Zhang et al, 2012; Cheng et al, 2011).
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