Abstract
The present work aimed to study the effect of palm pollen extract (PPE) as an anticoccidial and anti-apoptotic modulator during the course of murine intestinal Eimeria papillata infection. The fact that PPE has an anticoccidial efficacy against intestinal E. papillata infection in mice has been clarified by the reduction of faecal output of oocysts on day five post infection from 49.5 x 10(3) to 34 x 10(3) oocyst/g. Moreover, the number of intracellular eimerian stages of zygots and developing oocysts decreased by about 89% and that of schizonts and gamonts to 42% and 72%, respectively. E. papillata infection also induced an increase in the number of apoptotic cells from 17.5 to 122.8 apoptotic nuclei/10 villous crypt units (VCU). In addition, it caused a state of systemic inflammatory response as revealed by an elevation in levels of the pro-inflammatory biomarkers, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOs) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) from 5.3 and 78.3 to 33 pmol ml(-1) and 96.3 pg ml(-1) in blood, respectively, with concurrent duplication in the total leucocytic number. Upon treatment of infected mice with the aqueous PPE, the activity of iNOs was reduced by 55% and the level of TNF-alpha was decreased by 30%. Moreover, the total leucocytic count was significantly reduced from 9.05 x 10(3) to 7.8 x 10(3) cells/mm(3). Based on our results, PPE showed both anti-coccidial, anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic activities. So it can be used in developing new herbal medicine against animal coccidiosis and may be suitable agent for treating eimeriosis associated inflammatory response.