Effects of thymol and carvacrol supplementation on intestinal integrity and immune responses of broiler chickens challenged with Clostridium perfringens

Table 7 Effect of essential oils on the ileal morphology of broilers^c

Items	VH, μm	CD, μm	V:C	ML, μm
Treatment
U1	442.8	194.3	2.32	201.6
U2	395.2	206.6	2.12	201.8
U3	376.0	225.8	1.74	189.4
U4	488.7	214.7	1.98	181.2
C1	412.7	270.0	1.32^{b, *}	159.2
C2	472.0	245.0	1.95^{a, *}	160.8
C3	552.3	270.2	1.93^{a, *}	184.3
C4	451.0	237.3	1.99^{a, *}	201.7
SEM	18.69	7.94	0.06	5.93
P-value
Challenge	0.220	0.005	0.035	0.161
EO	0.805	0.712	0.450	0.898
Challenge × EO	0.151	0.668	0.003	0.186
Linear ^d	0.370	0.664	NA	0.371
Quadratic ^d	0.668	0.687	NA	0.985

^a,bMean values within the same column not sharing a common uppercase superscript letter differ significantly (P ≤ 0.05)
^cValues are means of eight replicates per treatment. VH villus height, CD crypt depth, V:C the ratio of villus height to crypt depth, ML thickness of muscular layer, SEM pooled standard error, EO essential oils, NA not analyzed
^dWhen the interaction between C. perfringens challenge and EO supplementation was not significant, linear and quadratic polynomial contrasts were performed on the main-effect means to EO dosages
^* When the interaction was significant, mean values within the challenged or unchallenged groups have a linear and quadratic dose response to EO dosages (P ≤ 0.05)

ISSN: 2049-1891