ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Nutrition and Metabolism
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1574513
Effects of chicken-hemoglobin-derived antimicrobial peptides on the intestinal mucosal immunity under chronic heat stress and vaccination responses in broilers
Provisionally accepted
- 1China Three Gorges University, Yichang, China
- 2China Agricultural University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
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Heat stress (HS) is a major concern in poultry production worldwide due to its adverse effects on feed intake, weight gain, carcass weight, and metabolic conditions. Several strategies have been explored to ameliorate the negative effects of HS-exposed broiler chickens, in which antimicrobial peptides are a promising approach. Previously here isolated the chicken hemoglobin antimicrobial peptides (CHAP) and further demonstrated that CHAP has powerful bactericidal activities. whether CHAP could favor growth performance and maintain intestinal mucosal immunity under chronic HS conditions remain unclear. In the present study, a total of 141 1-day-old broilers were divided into two groups: 36 broilers were used to establish a chronic HS model to observe the effects of CHAP on intestinal mucosal immunity; another 105 birds were used to monitoring the inductive effects of CHAP on two vaccines including NDV and AIV on broilers. Expectedly, HS-stimulated broilers chickens supplemented with CHAP increased the villus height of the duodenum (P<0.01), jejunum (P <0.05), and ileum (P<0.01) compared with that without CHAP administration under chronic HS conditions. The profile of alkaline phosphatase (AKP) and secreting IgA (sIgA)-producing cells were markedly decreased in the chronic HS group (P< 0.01), whereas both of them significantly recovered after CHAP administration (P< 0.01). CHAP administration improves the bird’s body weight and average daily gain as well as feed utilization rate under HS condition. Moreover, CHAP effectively mitigated HS-induced bursa injury by inhibiting excessive bursal apoptosis via downregulating caspase-3 and Bax as well as upregulating Bcl-2 (P<0.01). Interestingly, CHAP supplement enhanced the antibody titer of both NDV and AIV in broilers. Finally, CHAP administration enhanced the proliferation of splenic lymphocytes. In summary, our data demonstrate that CHAP not only maintains intestinal stability to improve growth performance but also inhibit excessive apoptosis of immune organs as well as upregulate vaccination effects.
Keywords: antimicrobial peptides, Heat stress, intestinal mucosal immunity, chicken, Vaccination
Received: 11 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 WANG, Hu, Liu, She and Tian. 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: DECHENG WANG, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, China
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