One hundred and sixty male Hy-line chicks were used to measure the clinical and pathological protective role of Kimchi and other probiotic products on chickens infected with influenza virus. Chicks were inoculated intranasally with 0.2 ml of the H5N1-HPAI virus (A/Chicken/Egypt/116/Dakahlia/2009, 106.5 EID50/ml). Birds were divided into five groups (G1 to G5). G1 served as negative non-treated non- challenged controls, G2 used as positive challenged non-treated control. G3, G4 and G5 were subdivided into 2 subgroups A and B. Three probiotics were used in this study, Amphibact, Mercopro+C and Mercoflufort-L that contain Kimchi-originated lactic acid bacteria. All birds were dead post-challenge either treated or non-treated with probiotics within 9 to 14 DPI and the protection percentages equaled 0.0% by day 14 post-challenge. There were no variable cumulative mortalities percentages (C %) between groups. The positive challenged non treated positive control group showed tracheal and cloacal shedding earlier (3DPI) than other challenged and treated groups (4DPI). Virus titers by EID50 in the positive challenged control group had nonsignificant increase than other treated groups. We found that all groups of birds were dead post-challenge by highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus regardless of the used medicaments and tracheal, pulmonary and splenic histopathological lesions possessed no striking differences between different groups. Therefore, we can conclude that the Kimchi and other probiotics are not suitable to be used to protect poultry flocks against the circulating H5N1-HPAI strains in Egypt.
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