review · Veterinary Sciences
Chronic stress poses a serious threat to poultry health, especially in fast-growing broiler breeds exposed to environmental challenges. This condition triggers oxidative stress, leading to leaky gut syndrome, systemic inflammation, and gut microbiota imbalances. Over time, these sustained inflammatory responses and cellular damage significantly degrade poultry performance and economic value. Major contributing stressors include heat stress, dietary mycotoxins, dysbiosis, and feeds containing oxidised lipids. Phytogenic substances, particularly plant-derived flavonoids and phenolic compounds, offer viable solutions due to their natural antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Counteracting oxidative stress through these plant compounds helps protect the intestinal barrier and regulates key transcription factors involved in inflammatory signalling pathways. Applying these natural substances provides a practical pathway to mitigate chronic stress and maintain animal welfare.
Chronic stress undermines poultry health and productivity, creating significant financial losses for poultry producers. Exploring plant-based additives offers a natural strategy to protect bird intestinal health against common threats like high temperatures and poor feed quality. Improving gut resilience supports animal welfare, reduces production losses, and contributes to more sustainable commercial livestock farming.
The findings point towards applications in animal feed additives and nutritional supplements aimed at poultry producers and feed manufacturers. Incorporating flavonoids and phenolic compounds into commercial diets can help protect flocks from heat stress and toxic feed components. Because the abstract identifies current applications alongside promising candidate substances, the work sits between applied research and market-ready feed formulations targeting broiler gut health.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Chronic stress is recognized as a secret killer in poultry. It is associated with systemic inflammation due to cytokine release, dysbiosis, and the so-called leaky gut syndrome, which mainly results from oxidative stress reactions that damage the barrier function of the cells lining the gut wall. Poultry, especially the genetically selected broiler breeds, frequently suffer from these chronic stress symptoms when exposed to multiple stressors in their growing environments. Since oxidative stress reactions and inflammatory damages are multi-stage and long-term processes, overshooting immune reactions and their down-stream effects also negatively affect the animal's microbiota, and finally impair its performance and commercial value. Means to counteract oxidative stress in poultry and other animals are, therefore, highly welcome. Many phytogenic substances, including flavonoids and phenolic compounds, are known to exert anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. In this review, firstly, the main stressors in poultry, such as heat stress, mycotoxins, dysbiosis and diets that contain oxidized lipids that trigger oxidative stress and inflammation, are discussed, along with the key transcription factors involved in the related signal transduction pathways. Secondly, the most promising phytogenic substances and their current applications to ameliorate oxidative stress and inflammation in poultry are highlighted.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.3390/vetsci10010055
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
