Dietary supplementation with Piper sarmentosum extract on gut health of chickens infected with Eimeria tenella.

To explore the potential alternative of anti-coccidials, we investigated the therapeutic efficacy of dietary Piper sarmentosum extract (PSE) on induced coccidia infection in chickens. A total of 96-day-old chickens were randomly distributed to 1 of 3 treatment groups, including (1) control negative untreated uninfected (CN), (2) control positive untreated infected (CP), and (3) Piper sarmentosum (P. sarmentosum) extract-treated infected group (PSE). Our results demonstrated that E. tenella challenged untreated group showed a reduction (P < 0.05) in post-infection (PI) body weight compared to control negative group. However, supplementation of P. sarmentosum extract had no significant effects on body weight and cecal lesions compared with control positive group. Infected chickens fed PSE diet decreased (P < 0.05) the bloody diarrhea scores and oocyst shedding (during the day 5 to 8 post-infection) than that of CP chickens. E. tenella-challenged chickens upregulated (P < 0.05) the mRNA expression of IL-8 and Bcl-2 compared to PSE chickens, while IFN-γ compared to CN chickens. On the other hand, treatment of P. sarmentosum extract tended to increase (P < 0.05) the transcription patterns of IL-4, IL-10, CLDN 1, SOD 1, and Bax with the comparison of control positive group; however, there were no significant effects on IL-8, ZO 1, and CAT expression between the PSE and CP groups. Collectively, these findings elaborated that dietary P. sarmentosum extract exhibit potential anti-coccidial effects in controlling the coccidia infection in chickens.