| dc.description.abstract | Background: The growing antimicrobial resistance could lead to up to 10 million human death cases per year by mid-century on current trends. The role of
antibiotic use in animal health is without doubt, so alternatives to antibiotics
have emerging importance in the veterinary field. Antibiotic alternatives include
propolis, which has a proven immunomodulatory and bacteriostatic or bactericidal effect, depending on the bacteria. Salmonella enterica, known as the most
common foodborne pathogen, is usually transmitted by eggs and poultry meat.
From a human and animal health perspective, there is a lot of research defining
its in vitro efficacy, but the in vivo efficacy of propolis is a less researched area.
Objectives: To test the activity of Hungarian propolis against salmonellosis in
broiler chickens.
Materials and Methods: In our studies, doses of propolis dried via alcoholic
extraction were administered 1×, 3× and 5× in feed and aqueous extract in drinking
water. During rearing, daily weight gain was measured individually and feed consumption was measured in groups. In addition, the treated groups were infected
by S. enterica strains.
Results and Discussion: It was shown that although there was no significant
difference in the weight gain between the control and treated groups, the weight
gain of the treated groups was professionally relevantly higher than that of the
control group during the first two weeks. Until day 12 of life, the groups treated
with propolis extract consumed much less feed than the control group, and their
weight gain exceeded that of the control group. This trend decreased until day
24. The feed conversion of the aqueous extract group was better than that of the
control group for most of the study period. The feeding of propolis did not result
in an earlier cessation of Salmonella shedding but did reduce the likelihood of
clinical signs of infection. Based on our results, we can conclude that propolis can
be safely used as a supplementary treatment for broiler chickens, significantly
improving economic indicators during certain periods of the rearing period. In the
future, it is worthwhile to conduct more studies with larger numbers of animals
to investigate the efficacy and pharmacokinetic properties of propolis. | en_US |
