ABSTRACT
Safe alternative anticoccidial drug to chemical feed additives are herbal extracts, because they don't results to tissue residue and drug resistance. In order to evaluate the effects of herbal extracts to control avian coccidiosis, 180 one-day-old broiler chickens were randomly divided into nine equal groups, as follows: (1) Biarum bovei (2) Nectaroscordum tripedale( 3) Dorema aucheri (4) Cichorium intybus (5) Prangos ferulaceae (6) diclazuril (7) Artemisia absinthium (8) infected control (9) uninfected control (each contains two groups). Administration of herbal extracts and supplementation of diclazuril was began 2 days before challenge and lasted for the duration of the experiment. The chicks of all the groups except uninfected control group were inoculated orally with sporulated oocysts (3 × 10(3) oocysts of Eimeria tenella) on the day 22 of age. The criteria employed were: body weight, feed conversion ratio, blood in feces, survival rate, lesion scoring, number of oocyst output per gram feces and histopathological changes. For histopathological evaluation, on day 12 post inoculation three birds from each group were randomly selected and humanly sacrificed. N. tripedale and diclazuril revealed better results in terms of growth performance, lesion score, extent of bloody diarrhea and oocyst count as compared to other herbal extracts. The increase in the severity of lesions was observed in groups of D. aucheri, A. absinthium, B. bovei, P. ferulaceae, C. intybus, diclazuril and N. tripedale, respectively. In conclusion, the current study showed that herbal extracts were effective in control of coccidiosis caused by the E. tenella infection.
ABSTRACT
Lemon balm derivatives are going to acquire a novelty as natural and potent remedy for treatment of viral infections since the influenza viruses are developing resistance to the current antivirals widely. Oseltamivir, Melissa officinalis essential oil (MOEO) and their synergistic efficacy against avian influenza virus (AIV) subtype H9N2 were evaluated in vitro in MDCK cells at different time exposure by using TCID50, HA, Real Time PCR and HI assay. The results showed that MOEO could inhibit replication of AVI through the different virus replication phase (P ≤ 0.05). Also the highest antiviral activity of MOEO was seen when AIV incubated with MOEO before cell infection. The TCID50/ml was reduced 1.3-2.1, 2.3-2.8, 3.7-4.5 log 10 than control group (5.6 log 10), HAU/50 µl was decreased 85-94, 71.4-94, 71.4-94 % and viral genome copy number/µl was brought down 68-95, 90-100, 89.6-99.9 % at pre-infection, post-infection and simultaneous stage, respectively. Hemagglutination inhibition result showed the MOEO was not able to inhibit agglutination of the chicken red blood cell (cRBC). Replication of the AVI was suppressed by the different concentration of oseltamivir completely or near 100 %. Also oseltamivir showed a synergistic activity with MOEO especially when oseltamivir concentration reduced under 0.005 mg/ml. The chemical composition was examined by GC-MS analysis and Its main constituents were identified as monoterpenaldehydes citral a, citral b. In conclusion, the findings of the study showed that lemon balm essential oil could inhibit influenza virus replication through different replication cycle steps especially throughout the direct interaction with the virus particles.
