Effect of purine nucleosides on growth performance, gut morphology, digestive enzymes, serum profile and immune response in broiler chickens

ABSTRACT

1. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of purine nucleosides on performance, gut morphology, intestinal enzymes and immunity functions in broiler chickens from 0 to 21 d of age.

2. A total of 360 1-d-old male chickens (Cobb 500) were randomly assigned to 4 treatments with 6 replications. Experimental diets consisted of a control without any additives and diets containing 0.1% pure adenosine, 0.1% pure guanosine and 0.1% equal aliquots of pure adenosine and guanosine. Two birds per cage (12 birds per treatment) were killed on d 11 and 21 in order to obtain serum samples for lipid profile, jejunal samples for morphology and mucosal immunity, digestive enzymes for epithelial maturation, and bursa and spleen samples for relative weight of immune organs to live body weight.

3. Birds receiving adenosine in their diets showed a significant increase in body weight and average daily gain and a significantly lower feed conversion ratio compared to the control birds. Villus height and width in jejunal samples also increased significantly in birds supplemented with adenosine. Although maltase was not affected by the experimental diets, adenosine increased alkaline phosphatase and aminopeptidase. Adenosine and its combination with guanosine boosted mucosal immunity as a result of increased IgA production. While there was no significant difference among treatments regarding the relative weight of the spleen, adenosine increased the relative weight of the bursa of Fabricius. Present results also showed that adding guanosine to broiler diets had no significant effects on growth, gut morphology, enzymes activity and immunological indices.

4. In conclusion, the improvement in growth performance, gut morphology and immunity in birds receiving adenosine demonstrated that pure adenosine could be a beneficial feed additive for the poultry industry, while guanosine showed no significant improvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Broiler
• growth performance
• gut morphology
• immune response
• immunity
• nucleosides
• purine nucleosides

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate Sadia Nasim and Ketwee Saksrithai (graduate students in Dr. King’s laboratroy) for their assistance, James Graham (research assistance at the central laboratory in the Department of Nutrition, UC Davis) for his technical assistance, researchers in the Department of Animal Science for discussions and advice and Dr Klaus Hoffmann (Chemoforma Co.) for providing purine nucleosides. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran, for its financial support of this project. The research was funded, in part, by the NIFA through the Agricultural Research Program at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (Evans-Allen Program, project number NC.X-291-5-15-170-1).