article · Animals
This study evaluated prebiotic supplementation as both a preventive and therapeutic treatment against intestinal coccidiosis caused by mixed Eimeria species in young male rabbits. Researchers examined fifty rabbits across prophylactic and therapeutic experimental groups. In the prevention trial, rabbits fed prebiotics prior to oral parasite inoculation showed significantly lower faecal oocyst counts and mitigated weight loss compared to untreated infected controls. In the therapeutic trial on naturally infected rabbits, prebiotic treatment significantly decreased oocyst shedding by day seven and supported higher body weight compared to untreated animals. Examination of intestinal tissues revealed lower counts of parasite stages in both supplemented groups. Furthermore, the prebiotic regimen produced no adverse changes in key blood biochemical markers, indicating it is safe for rabbit health.
Intestinal coccidiosis is a common parasitic infection in rabbits that causes severe weight loss and tissue damage. Demonstrating that prebiotics can safely suppress parasite reproduction and protect animal growth provides a non-pharmaceutical management strategy. This helps support rabbit health and welfare while reducing the impact of parasitic disease in animal farming without relying on conventional medications.
This research is applied and tested at animal trial scale, indicating direct relevance to animal feed manufacturers and commercial rabbit producers. The findings could enable the development of specialised prebiotic feed additives or preventative nutritional supplements targeted at controlling coccidial disease in domestic and farmed rabbit populations. Moving to widespread commercial use would require field trials under standard farm management conditions to establish optimal dosing and cost-effectiveness.
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This study was conducted to investigate the effect of prebiotic supplementation against intestinal coccidiosis in rabbits. Fifty male rabbits aged 35-60 days (1-1.5 kg) were divided into prophylactic and therapeutic experiments (five groups, 10 rabbits per group). Prophylactic experiment had prebiotic supplemented (PS-P), non-supplemented infected control (NI-P), and non-supplemented non-infected control (NN-P) groups. Ten days post-prebiotic supplementation (PPS), rabbits in groups PS-P and NI-P were infected orally with 5.0 × 10<sup>4</sup> sporulated oocysts of mixed <i>Eimeria</i> species. However, therapeutic experiment had prebiotic supplemented (PS-T) and untreated infected (UI-T) groups of naturally infected rabbits with <i>Eimeria</i> species. A significant reduction in oocyst count per gram feces (OPG) (<i>p</i> ≤ 0.05) was reported in the PS-P (57.33 × 10<sup>3</sup> ± 2.84) and NI-P (130.83 × 10<sup>3</sup> ± 43.38) groups during the experiment. Additionally, rabbits in groups (PS-P, 970.33 ± 31.79 g and NI-P, 870.66 ± 6.66 g) showed weight loss after infection. However, a significant (<i>p</i> ≤ 0.05) decrease in OPG was observed at day seven PPS in the PS-T group (4 × 10<sup>3</sup> ± 0.00) when compared with the UI-T group (32 × 10<sup>3</sup> ± 7.54). Furthermore, the PS-T group had a higher body weight than rabbits in the UI-T group. Histopathological findings of the intestinal tissues (duodenum, jejunum, and ileum) showed that the counts of the endogenous stages were significantly higher in the NI-P and UI-T groups than in the prebiotic-supplemented groups (PS-P and PS-T). Supplementation of the prebiotic did not have any adverse effects on biochemical parameters, such as AST, ALT, creatinine, total protein, and total cholesterol. In conclusion, prebiotic supplementation can be used to minimize the adverse effects of intestinal coccidiosis in rabbits, which in turn limits body weight loss, especially for the prophylaxis of coccidial infection.
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DOI: 10.3390/ani9110965
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