Exploring alternatives to antibiotics as health promoting agents in poultry- a review

Abstract

Poultry industry has undergone rapid growth during last three decades. For which even higher usage of antibiotics, both as growth promoters as well as therapeutic agents, has been adopted. However, due to the fear of resistance development in bacterial populations to antibiotics, presence of antibiotic residues in poultry products and increasing consumer demand for products free from antibiotic residues, search for alternatives that could replace antibiotics without causing loss to productivity or product quality has accelerated. Such alternatives in poultry include the use of organic acids, probiotic microorganisms, prebiotic substrates that benefit proliferation of beneficial bacterial populations or synbiotic (combinations of prebiotics and probiotics) ensuring better production and maintaining health of the birds. Others include vitamins and minerals, herbal drugs, plant extracts, phytobiotics and antimicrobial peptides. Probiotic organisms provides competition to pathogenic organisms for intestinal colonizing sites, reduce the diversion of nutrients for harmful microbes and the toxins produced by them and stimulates the immune systems. Similarly, prebiotic offers an alternative, as it alters the intestinal microbes and immune system to reduce colonization by pathogens and allows proliferation of beneficial microflora in the gut. Even using synbiotic is a better strategy for enhancing poultry production, however, more research is needed for selection of probiotic, prebiotics or synbiotics either alone or in combination that can result in the selection of strains capable of performing effectively in the gastrointestinal tract. The contents of this review will be useful for researchers to enrich their knowledge on alternatives of antibiotics in poultry birds without compromising performance of birds and bird welfare.

Arcobacter: an emerging food-borne zoonotic pathogen, its public health concerns and advances in diagnosis and control – a comprehensive review

“…In the era of emerging and rising antibiotic resistance against several commonly used antibiotics, there is a demanding need for exploring alternative and novel therapeutic options for countering infection with Arcobacters in a better way, as like being explored to tackle other food-borne pathogens (Dhama et al 2013a(Dhama et al , 2013bTiwari et al 2013;Yadav et al 2016). In this direction, there is an essential need to shift the attention towards various therapeutic regimens like bacteriophages, probiotics, avian egg yolk antibodies, cytokines, RNAi technology, quorum sensing inhibitors, herbs, essential oils, plant derivatives and others, which have been recently documented to possess potent applications against various pathogenic bacteria having high food-borne concerns (Dhama et al 2008(Dhama et al , 2013bSudhakar et al 2013;Tiwari et al 2014Tiwari et al , 2016Gopi et al 2014;Khan et al 2016).…”

Role of acidifiers in livestock nutrition and health: A review

“…The heightened public concern over the emergence of antibiotic‐resistant strains prompted the exploitation of alternate growth promoters to antibiotics (Dhama et al, ; Yadav et al, ). Among such alternatives, one such striking preference includes acidifiers, especially in swine and poultry sectors.…”

Use of Prebiotics as an Alternative to Antibiotic Growth Promoters in the Poultry Industry

“…Besides improved host health and productivity, prebiotics have also proven their efficacy to reduce colonization of important pathogens both for poultry production and public health, such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, C. perfringens, and E. coli [37][38][39][40][41]. This set of beneficial effects, along with the lower risks of undesirable side effects in the host and the fact that they are cheaper and easier to produce in a large scale than probiotics, make prebiotics an excellent option as an alternative to minimize the use of antibiotics in poultry production, thus contributing to reduce the problem of AMR [42,43].…”