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Sheep red blood cells (SRBC) are commonly employed by scientists to address humoral immune responses in poultry. While SRBC are closely related to the study of humoral immunity in poultry, the initial purpose of much research did not focus on the mechanisms involved. Here, we provide a qualitative approach and utilize scientometric techniques, including trend analyses, scientific collaborations and mapping, and word co-occurrence evaluations, to summarize the role of SRBC in the poultry studies. First, a search strategy on Web of Science (WoS) was conducted to find publications that included SRBC in the poultry studies. Publications were partitioned into 4 categories: nutrition, genetics, microbiology, and physiology. For scientometric evaluation, scientific maps and networks were produced to clarify the occurrence of SRBC in the poultry studies. Data used included 702 publications over a period of 50 y (1968-2018) that were retrieved from the WoS database. About 95% of the publications were published in English language. Indigenous, experimental, and commercial chickens, quail, and medicinal plants field/topics were the main subjects of publications. In recent years, authors have used SRBC to study humoral immune response as a secondary aim of their research, especially when poultry production/performance was studied. This was especially the case in recent decades for studies in poultry nutrition. Analysis of keywords co-occurrence showed that the phrase SRBC mostly occurred with chickens, immune response, and especially with broilers. Moreover, the "medicinal plants" are becoming important especially for research on broilers and the reduced use of antibiotics in feed. Consequently, in addition to studying the medicinal plants, finding antibiotic replacements, and/or growth performance in the birds, humoral immunity is suggested to be investigated using SRBC. Moreover, interdisciplinary studies with the cooperation of scientists from agriculture, veterinary, immunology, biochemistry and molecular biology, and toxicology will develop in the future., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

BACKGROUND: Infectious diseases widely occur through bacteria such as Salmonella spp. in different hosts such as domestic animals and human. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to isolate Salmonella Typhimurium bacteria from poultry feces and in vitro assessment of antimicrobial effects of 9 species of Zagros native medicinal plants. METHODS: Ethanol extracts of jooshir, shallots, Iranian eremurus, artichokes, sheng, amaranth, sorrel, oregano and harmel were extracted through rotary vacuum system. Furthermore, 12 strains of Salmonella Typhimurium were isolated from poultry feces in Sistan region. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of plant extracts were determined through micro dilution method. Sensitivity of different strains to antibiotics was tested through standard Kirby-Bauer diffusion disk methods. RESULTS: Salmonella Typhimurium strains are resistant to Penicillin (100%), Ampicillin (100%), Tetracycline (16.6%), Amikacin (8.3%) and Oxacillin (75.0%). Results of the antimicrobial assay have shown that extracts of amaranth, jooshir and artichokes had the highest MIC against Salmonella Typhimurium. CONCLUSIONS: Results of the current study showed that according to the antibiotic resistance of Salmonella Typhimurium isolated from poultry, antibiotic treatment, in particular with penicillin, ampicillin and oxacillin with the bacterium resistance of 75 to 100% would not be effective. In contrast, using plant ethanol extracts especially jooshir, amaranth and artichokes could be recommended as an alternative to conventional antibiotic treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Humoral immune responses in Japanese quail are heritable. • After immunization of the birds with SRBC, genetic correlations between immunoglobulin M (IgM) and early growth traits are positive, but for AbT and IgY are negative. • Genetic correlations for AbNDV with BW traits are negative, but with BWG traits are positive. • Genetic selection for IgM responses could improve growth traits. Abstract The aim of this study was to estimate genetic parameters of early growth performances and humoral immune responses (antibody titers against sheep red blood cells (SRBC) and Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV)) in Japanese quail. For this purpose, a total of 10,923 records of early growth traits including body weights (BW) at 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 d old and body weight gain (BWG) between 0–5, 5–10, 10–15 and 15–20 days, and 2,314 records of humoral immune responses were used to estimate genetic parameters through multiple-trait Bayesian analyses. The estimates of heritability of BW and BWG traits were 0.14 to 0.28 and 0.08 to 0.10, respectively. The range of genetic and phenotypic correlations for BW traits varied from 0.63 to 0.98 and 0.17 to 0.89, respectively. Furthermore, estimates of genetic and phenotypic correlations for BWG traits at different ages were in the range of 0.46 to 0.86 and 0.12 to 0.46, respectively. Heritability estimates of total antibody titer (AbT), titer of immunoglobulin Y (IgY) and titer of immunoglobulin M (IgM) against SRBC were 0.21, 0.24 and 0.20, respectively, but h2 of antibody titer against NDV (AbNDV) was lower than those of estimated for SRBC antigen (h2 = 0.17). Genetic correlations between antibody titers against SRBC and NDV were similar (0.42 − 0.46). Genetic correlations were positive only for IgM with BW traits, however, estimates of genetic correlation between BW traits at different ages with AbT and IgY were negative and moderate (−0.30 to −0.66), and with AbNDV were negative and low (−0.13 to −0.25). Like BW traits, genetic and phenotypic correlations between AbT and IgY titers and BWG traits were negative and varied from −0.21 to −0.72, while genetic correlations of BWG traits with IgM and AbNDV titers were both positive (0.11 to 0.27 and 0.23 to 0.31, respectively). It is suggests that selection to improved BW and BWG traits may lead to decline of humoral immune responses in Japanese quail. However, improvement of BW and BWG traits and humoral immune responses would be possible through selection for IgM titers against SRBC due to its high and positive genetic correlation with growth traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]