ABSTRACT
An in vitro experiment was conducted to study the effects of chitosan on the secretion of cytokines and expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase mRNA in peritoneal macrophages of broiler chicken. In the experiment, peritoneal macrophages were incubated for 24 h in culture medium supplemented with 0 (control), 40, 80, 160 and 320 µg/mL chitosan. The results showed that chitosan tended to increase quadratically the levels of interleukin-1 (P = 0.093) and interleukin-2 (P = 0.106) in the culture fluid of peritoneal macrophage. Chitosan also significantly enhanced inducible nitric oxide synthase mRNA expression of peritoneal macrophage in a quadratic dose-dependent manner (P < 0.05) and tended to promote quadratically the secretion of nitric oxide (P = 0.053) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (P = 0.157) in peritoneal macrophages. This result implied that one of the mechanisms by which chitosan modulated immune functions in chickens might be chitosan activating expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase and then improving the secretion of nitric oxide.