Use of selected plant extracts in controlling and neutralizing toxins and sporozoites associated with Necrotic Enteritis and Coccidiosis

Authors: KHAN, MD MARUF - North Carolina A&t State University; Lillehoj, Hyun; Lee, Young; ADETUNJI, ADEDEJI - North Carolina A&t State University; OMALIKO, PAUL - North Carolina A&t State University; KANG, HYEWON - North Carolina A&t State University; NAGABHUSHANAM, KALYANAM - Sabinsa Corp; FASINA, YEWANDE - North Carolina A&t State University

Submitted to: Applied Sciences
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/6/2024
Publication Date: 4/10/2024
Citation: Khan, M., Lillehoj, H.S., Lee, Y.H., Adetunji, A., Omaliko, P.C., Kang, H., Nagabhushanam, K., Fasina, Y.O. 2024. Use of selected plant extracts in controlling and neutralizing toxins and sporozoites associated with Necrotic Enteritis and Coccidiosis. Applied Sciences. V.14/3178. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14083178.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/app14083178

Interpretive Summary: To address the increasing concerns about the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, there have been active efforts to develop alternative strategies to mitigate disease responses in animal agriculture. In this report, ARS scientists collaborated with a university team to study the role of antibiotic alternative feed additives in mitigating common parasitic and bacterial infections using natural dietary products such as phytochemicals. Using dietary green tea and ginger extracts, this work showed that novel antibiotic alternative plant diets can indeed reduce gut damage mediated by parasites and bacteria to enhance animal production. For example, ginger contains gingerol, green tea consists of catechins, alkaloids, and polysaccharide, and onion peel contains quercetin and all of these phytochemicals provide beneficial effects on various host physiological responses associated with immunity and growth. Furthermore, the effects of these selected phytochemicals, specially green tea and ginger extracts, on viability of Eimeria tenella and Clostridium bacteria which cause intestinal disease such as coccidiosis and necrotic enteritis, respectively, provide logical basis to use these feed additive phytochemicals to replace antibiotics in promoting intestinal health and to reduce economic losses due to intestinal infections such as coccidiosis and necrotic enteritis.

Technical Abstract: Due to increasing concerns about the contamination of animal food products with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their byproducts, phytogenic feed additives in animal diet have been explored as antibiotic alternatives. In this study, we investigated the effect of Ginger root (GRE) and green teas (GTEC- caffeinated and GTED-Decaffeinated), and Onion peel combined (OPEC) on the activity of C. perfringens toxin genes and Eimeria tenella sporozoites. To this end, we cultured two Clostridium perfringens strains, CP19 and CP240 (Rollins Diagnostic Lab, Raleigh, USA) with or without Bacitracin Methylene Disalicylate (BMD), GTEC, GTED AND GRE (n=3 per treatment) for 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 24 h, extracted RNA to determine the expression of tpeL, a-toxin and NetB and measured the protein concentration of NetB-positive C. perfringens toxin. Also, we evaluated the cytotoxic effect of Green Tea and Ginger extracts on E. tenella sporozoites. Results show that phytogenic extracts, GRE, GTEC and GTED, significantly reduced (P < 0.05) the level of expression of a-toxin gene compared to control, however, BMD treatment showed much less effect. Furthermore, NetB- and tpeL- encoding gene expression was significantly (P < 0.05) reduced by GRE, and GTED as well as BMD treatment compared to the control. In contrast GTEC treatment did not change the expression levels of these genes and was similar to control. With the CP240 strain, all the selected phytogenic extracts significantly reduced (P < 0.05) the expression of selected genes except for OPEC which was similar to control. GRE, GTEC and GTED all reduced the viability of concentration of E. tenella sporozoites. Overall, our data show that these selected phytogenic extracts reduced the level of expression of toxin encoding genes associated with necrotic enteritis and decreased the viability of sporozoites which cause coccidiosis in broiler chicken.