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Mycotoxins are the chemical substances, produced as the secondary metabolites of some toxigenic species of fungi which cause critical health issues in humans, birds and different animal species while Chlorella vulgaris (CV) is a unicellular microalga which contains plenty of important nutritional ingredients. This study was planned to evaluate the toxicopathological, hematobiochemical and immune changes incurred by dietary supplementation of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and their mitigation through CV in broilers. For this study to be conducted, 180 broiler birds of one day old were uniformly distributed into six (06) groups and administered various combinations of AFB1 (200 μg/kg) or CV (0.5 and 1.0%) and the duration of the experiment was 42 days. Parameters deliberated were body weight, feed intake, relative visceral organ weights, gross and histopathological examination, hematological parameters (erythrocytic and leukocytic count, hematocrit and hemoglobin), serum biochemical analysis (serum total proteins, ALT, globulin, albumin, creatinine and urea), humoral response against sheep RBCs, response to subcutaneous injection of phytohemagglutinin-P and phagocytic system function assay. The results of this experiment confirmed that 1.0% CV efficiently mitigated AFB1 induced alterations in the studied parameters while this mitigation was partial when 0.5% CV was used with AFB1. Further studies in this regard are still needed to investigate the exact AFB1:CV ratio responsible for complete amelioration., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is among the most potent genotoxic and carcinogenic mycotoxins and is a major source of distress for the growing poultry sector. On the other hand, distillery yeast sludge or distillery sludge (DS) is a byproduct of molasses-based industries. It is often treated as a waste despite containing abundant nutrients particularly protein, basic amino acids, and vitamins along with other macro and micronutrients. This study was designed to investigate the oxidative stress and immunological alterations induced by AFB1 and their amelioration by dietary supplementation with DS. For this purpose, 360 newly hatched broiler chicks were randomly divided into twelve groups (30 birds each) and fed different combinations of AFB1 (100, 200, or 600 µg/kg) and DS (5 or 10 g/kg) for 42 days. The parameters under consideration were body weight, feed conversion ratio (FCR), relative organ weights, histopathological examination of different visceral organs, total antioxidant capacity, antibody response to intravenous injection of sheep red blood cells, in situ lymphoproliferative response to phytohemagglutinin-P, and phagocytic potential through a carbon clearance assay system. The results of this study established that DS supplementation ameliorated AFB1-associated oxidative stress and ameliorated toxicopathological and immunological anomalies in groups given AFB1 at 100 µg/kg and 200 µg/kg; however, little to no relief was observed in birds fed AFB1 at 600 µg/kg. The determination of the actual ratio of the AFB1 to the DS for substantiating the ameliorating effects requires further investigation., (© 2024. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Society for Mycotoxin (Research Gesellschaft für Mykotoxinforschung e.V.) and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)