ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Physiol.
Sec. Avian Physiology
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrated Approaches to Understanding and Improving Poultry Health, Immunity, and Productivity: Unraveling the Role of MetabolismView all 5 articles
Blood Carotenoids as a Biomarker of Intestinal Functionality and Performance in Broiler Chickens
Provisionally accepted
- College of Agriculture "Luiz de Queiroz", University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Research to establish a reliable biomarker that allows the evaluation, in a practical and accurate way, of the intestinal functionality and productive performance of broiler chickens is one of the main challenges of modern poultry production. In this context, blood carotenoids have stood out as promising indicators, as they reflect the absorptive efficiency and physiological balance of birds. The objective of this study was to verify whether the determination of total carotenoids in the blood can be used as an effective biomarker in experiments that evaluate nutritional additives, correlating with zootechnical parameters. Data from five experiments were analyzed, totaling 9,125 broilers. Performance traits and blood total carotenoids were measured, and univariate and multivariate analyses were applied to evaluate relationships between carotenoid status and performance. Supplementation with nutritional additives resulted in a mean increase of 14% (p > 0.05) in blood carotenoid concentrations, regardless of the experimental design, diet, or the presence of a health challenge. A positive correlation was also observed between carotenoid levels and weight gain, and a negative correlation with feed conversion, in the periods from 0 to 35 and 0 to 42 days of age. The results indicate that the quantification of carotenoids in the blood, performed in a fast and minimally invasive way, can be used as an innovative tool to monitor intestinal functionality and predict productive performance in broilers in response to nutritional supplementation.
Keywords: biomarkers, Additives, Intestinal functionality, performance, Poultry
Received: 16 Sep 2025; Accepted: 29 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bittencourt, Silveira and Menten. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: José Fernando Machado Menten, jfmenten@usp.br
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.