Prebiotics and Fish Immune Response: A Review of Current Knowledge and Future Perspectives

Abstract

It is now a well-documented fact that there is a distinct relation between fish nutrition and health status. Intensification of aquaculture practice to meet market demand causes stress and elevates the risk of the disease outbreak. Therefore, provisions of proper diets as well as appropriate feeding regimens are of high importance in intensive aquaculture. Considering the negative impacts raised by prophylactic and therapeutic use of antibiotic in aquaculture, administration of dietary immunostimulant has been suggested as an alternative to antimicrobial agents. In this sense, functional dietary supplements, including pre-, pro-and synbiotic received increasing attention as an environment-friendly strategy for improving fish health. During the past years, administration of prebiotics in the diet of different fish species revealed promising results in immune response. In the present review article, the topic of the administration of dietary prebiotics in aquaculture is addressed with a special focus on recent findings regarding the effects of prebiotics on fish immune response and possible mode of action. Furthermore, the present study covers the gap in existing knowledge and suggests issues that merit further investigation.

The effects of galactooligosaccharide on systemic and mucosal immune response, growth performance and appetite related gene transcript in goldfish (Carassius auratus gibelio)

“…Furthermore, supplementation of rainbow trout [9], red drum [12,16] and white sea bream (Diplodus sargus) diet with 1 or 2% GOS remarkably increased systemic immune responses. The improved immune response has been attributed to fermentation of GOS by beneficial microbial communities in intestinal microbiota and subsequent production of short chain fatty acids [6,7,29]. Even so remained to be proven in fish, studies on mice revealed that SCFAs can modulated immune response through binding to G M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 11 protein coupled receptor, GPR43, which is expressed mainly on innate immune response and inflammatory cells [34].…”

“…Lactic acid bacteria) [5]. Galactooligosaccharide (GOS) is one of the promising prebiotic which has improved growth performance, immune response, stress resistance and disease resistance in various fish species [6,7]. In spite of extensive researches on administration of GOS in edible cultured fish [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], to the best of our knowledge there was no published study the effects of GOS on performance and immune response of ornamental fish.…”

Progress in fish gastrointestinal microbiota research

“…Further research in this field will facilitate the selection of probiotics, prebiotics and chemical compounds with potentials to improve the gut homoeostasis and health of fish, which are promising alternatives of antibiotics that have been inhibited for use in food animals (Hoseinifar et al . , ; Dawood & Koshio ). In this review, we will focus on structure and composition of fish microbiota, the influence of environmental factors on the composition of GI microbiota, as well as insights into the functions of fish intestinal microbiota gained from gnotobiotic zebrafish studies.…”

Intestinal histomorphology, autochthonous microbiota and growth performance of the oscar (Astronotus ocellatusAgassiz, 1831) following dietary administration of xylooligosaccharide

“…lactic acid bacteria) in the human intestine (Chapla et al., ). Moreover, recent studies revealed beneficial effects of XOS on growth performance, immune response, digestive enzyme activity and disease resistance in several fish species (Xu et al., ; Hoseinifar et al., , ; Guerreiro et al., ). Although the exact mode of prebiotic action remains to be clarified, it has been suggested that XOS and other prebiotics can have a beneficial effect on the fish growth performance and health status through modulation of intestinal microbiota toward potentially beneficial communities (e.g.…”