Chemical compounds, antioxidant and scolicidal potencies of Thymus fontanesii essential oil.

Medicinal plants have become a source of new drugs to treat various diseases due to their low cost, few side effects, and wide accessibility. Among these, essential oils are promising natural compounds for use in scolicidal activity. The targets of our current work were to assess the chemical composition, antioxidant and protoscolicidal activities of Thymus fontanesii essential oil. The essential oil was extracted by hydrodistillation, and chemical compounds were quantified by GC-MS/GC-FID. The in vitro antioxidant activity was determined by DPPH radical scavenging assay and ferric reducing power. Three concentrations of essential oil (4.625, 9.25, and 13.875 mg/ml) were tested for 5, 10, and 15 min against E. granulosus protoscoleces and their viability was assessed by eosin staining essay. The yield of the essential oil was 2.06 ± 0.41 % (w/w). Carvacrol (59.68 %) was the main compound of Thymus fontanesii essential oils. Moreover, Thymus fontanesii essential oil has an antioxidant activity IC50 of 346.08 µg/ml and EC50 of 869.82 µg/ml. Furthermore, 100 % mortality of protoscoleces was observed at the doses of 9.25 mg/ml and 13.875 mg/ml after 5 min of exposure. Our findings show a potency of antioxidant and protoscolicidal activities against protoscoleces of E. granulosus.

Prevalence of rotavirus (GARV) and coronavirus (BCoV) associated with neonatal diarrhea in calves in western Algeria

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To study the prevalence of bovine group A rotavirus (GARV) and bovine coronavirus (BCoV) in diarrheic feces from calves and the sensitive's parameters such as age group and sex.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Feces samples from 82 diarrheic dairy calves from farms around Tiaret (Western Algeria) were collected. These samples were tested by ELISA assay.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The results showed that the prevalence of rotavirus and coronavirus infection are 14.63% (12.2% alone and 2.43% associated with bovine coronavirus) and 20.73% (18.3% alone and 2.43% associated with GARV), respectively.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>The present study demonstrates that the both BCoV and GARV are involved in the neonatal calves' diarrhea, where the frequency of BCoV is clearly higher than that of GARV.</p>