Apilarnil reduces fear and advances sexual development in male broilers but has no effect on growth

Abstract

1. An experiment was conducted to determine the possibility of stimulating sexual development at an early age in male and female broiler chickens by administration of apilarnil, a natural bee product, in the pre-pubertal period. 2. From 28 to 55 d of age, birds were given apilarnil orally. The effects of low (2.5 g/bird) and high (7.5 g/bird) doses of apilarnil on growth performance, testicular weight, secondary sexual characteristics, blood lipids, testosterone and fearful behaviour were evaluated. 3. Apilarnil administration did not cause a positive effect on growth performance of male and female broilers suggesting that apilarnil did not have an anabolic effect. 4. Apilarnil administration suppressed blood glucose and cholesterol. 5. Birds receiving apilarnil remained immobile for a shorter period in a tonic imobiliy test and showed less home-cage avoidance responses suggesting a lower level of fearfulness. 6. Increases in testicular weight, testosterone concentration and comb growth in males receiving apilarnil implied that it stimulates the sexual maturation at an early age. However, a similar stimulation of secondary sexual characteristics was not observed in females.

Bioactive Components and Effect Mechanism of Apilarnil

“…This situation results in the stimulating of the spermatogenesis in men. Also, this positive result of apilarnil could be examined rather than drugs and chemicals to stimulate sexual development (Altan et al, 2013;Yücel et al, 2011). Not only the data, which has been reported on the subject of the increment of the hormone levels as an impact of the drone larvae in Eastern Europe and Asian folk medicine, demonstrates the androgen-like activity of apilarnil, but also previously described data is contributing to this characteristic feature of apilarnil in particular (Artık and Konar, 2015;Seres et al, 2014).…”

Can Food Supplement Produced from Apilarnil be an Alternative to Testosterone Replacement Therapy

“…Also, she measures the testosterone and cholesterol levels in blood. Administration of high dosage Apilarnil (7.5 g/day) increases the comb and testes sizes and testosterone level very significantly, also statistically significant decreasing observes in the fearful behavior and total cholesterol level [12]. These pioneer researches indicate the androgenic effect of Apilarnil.…”

“…At the end of the experiment, it was determined that the experiment group have bigger combs then controls [11]. Altan is a participant of the same research group deepened the research in 2013 [12]. She examines both comb and testes size and fearful behavior in broilers with oral administration of different dosage of Apilarnil.…”

Chemical Composition and Androgenic Effect of Bee Drone Larvae (Apilarnil) for Goat Male Kids

“…Although BDL has been used in Eastern European and Asian folk medicine for increasing testosterone hormone levels for thousands of years, the androgenic activity of BDL being reported in recent studies [19,31] . Scientific studies have reported that BDL, a natural source of androgenic hormones, stimulates spermatogenesis in men and increases sexual performance [13,32,33] . In another study, it has been determined that hormone therapy in male chickens increases testicular weights and testosterone production and supports normal growth and development.…”