Deciphering the immunomodulatory and growth performance effects of trichanthera Gigantea extract adjuvanted chitosan in broiler chicken

Poultry industry in our country is confronting the problem of food safety and security where there is a threat of antimicrobial resistance with drug residue and the rise of the feed price over the past few years. Hence, as an alternative, an investigation using Trichanthera gigantea extract adjuvanted chitosan was done to observe the immunomodulatory and growth promoting effect of the formulation. Two days old chick was introduced to 1 mg/ml of Trichanthera gigantea extract adjuvanted chitosan, 1 mg/ml of Trichanthera gigantea extract or 1 mg/ml of chitosan via oral administration as supplementation to the commercial feed. Another group of chicks were kept as
negative control and being fed with only commercial feed for 12 days. At the end of the rearing period, 0.2 ml blood was withdrawn for white blood cells (WBC) count and the broiler growth performance was calculated. The formulation created was also tested through cell migration assay on proliferative cells using 4T1 cancer cells as the model. The result revealed significant enhancement of WBC and granulocytes count for all of the experimental group. For growth performance there were no significant findings except for higher specific growth rate in the group receiving 1 mg/ml of Trichanthera gigantea extract compared to the negative control group. Moreover, all of the formulations were able to inhibit the proliferation of the cancer cells
in the assay. From the findings, supplementation of with Trichanthera gigantea extract adjuvanted chitosan is able to stimulate the immune response in broiler chicken and can be potentially used to reduce usage of antibiotic in feed while opening more opportunities on study of growth promoting effects of the supplementation.
Keywords: Trichanthera gigantea extract, chitosan, immunomodulation, growth performance, broiler chicken