Dietary encapsulated essential oils and organic acids mixture improves gut health in broiler chickens challenged with necrotic enteritis

Table 7 Effects of dietary supplementation with BLJ on gene expressions of tight junction proteins, growth factors and mucin-2 in the jejunums of broiler chickens challenged with NE (at 7 days after NE infection)

Items	NE¹	Claudin1	Occludin	ZO-1	TGF-β3	IGF-2	EGFR	GLP-2	Mucin-2
BLJ, mg/kg
0	–	0.82^b	1.02	1.07	1.03	1.04^b	1.02	1.04	1.05^b
0	+	0.56^b	0.93	0.66	0.89	1.34^b	0.86	1.05	0.71^c
500	–	0.50^b	1.10	0.64	1.18	1.21^b	1.45	1.26	1.44^a
500	+	1.02^a	0.57	0.21	1.17	2.47^a	0.60	1.84	0.55^c
SEM²		0.08	0.08	0.08	0.08	0.14	0.11	0.10	0.09
Main effect
0		0.69	0.98	0.87^a	0.96	1.19	0.94	1.05^b	0.88
500		0.76	0.83	0.43^b	1.17	1.84	1.03	1.55^a	1.00
Non-challenged		0.66	1.06^a	0.86^a	1.10	1.13	1.24^a	1.15	1.23
Challenged		0.79	0.57^b	0.44^b	1.03	1.90	0.73^b	1.45	0.63
P-value³
BLJ		0.592	0.310	< 0.01	0.194	< 0.01	0.669	0.003	0.322
Challenged		0.335	0.034	< 0.01	0.655	< 0.01	0.017	0.056	< 0.01
Challenged×BLJ		0.010	0.109	0.929	0.667	< 0.01	0.094	0.064	0.027

^{a, b, c} Means within the same column with different superscripts differ significantly (P < 0.05)
¹NE Co-challenged with Eimeria spp. and Clostridium perfringens; −, without NE challenge; +, with NE challenge
²SEM, standard error of the mean
³P-values represent the main effect of the diet, the main effect of the NE challenge, and the interaction between the dietary treatments and NE challenge

ISSN: 2049-1891