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The global population is quickly increasing with finite resources, resulting in a food crisis that results in 10% of world’s population to suffer from hunger. To meet growing demands, the animal agriculture industry has spent decades researching how to provide sufficient protein sources on an international scale. As a result, livestock production has increased overall efficiency to nourish exponentially rising populations, including in developing countries.

The poultry industry is a sustainable source of cheap, available protein in the form of both meat and eggs. Improvements in nutrition, genetics, and management, particularly related to disease prevention, have contributed to the rapid progress of the industry.

In poultry production, it is essential to use management methods that allow chickens to grow safely and efficiently to prevent potential illness for both the birds and the consumer. Researchers and producers have utilized nutrition and feed additives to enhance intestine health to increase productivity. The demand for products to include in feed to boost immunity, including pre-biotics and pro-biotics, became more significant after concerns of antibiotic resistance reduced the use of in-feed antimicrobials in 2017.

Producers are now battling reemerging diseases that had been suppressed by low-dose antibiotic use in feed for years, causing concern for animal welfare, consumer safety, and introducing a large economic threat to the poultry industry. The inclusion of antibiotics in feed were used to help control intestinal disorders, especially digestive tract infections. Focus has turned towards finding alternative methods to prevent or relieve intestinal diseases in poultry.

One of the most devastating diseases to the industry, coccidiosis, is caused by the parasite Eimeria spp. Coccidiosis predisposes chickens to another intestinal disease, necrotic enteritis caused by the bacteria Clostridium perfringens, commonly known as gangrene. Chickens ingest both Eimeria and C. perfringens by pecking at surfaces in a poultry house and ingesting the pathogens, even after thorough poultry house cleanouts.

Several feed additives have been shown to help fight against the pathogens, but the questions of “why” and “how” they work are still not well understood. Answers that provide insight into how to fight these diseases in the future using antibiotic-free products could clarify precise and accurate approaches to help protect chickens and prevent potential illness for humans.

This research focused on understanding the underlying mechanisms of how both pathogens cause damage to the small intestine, their primary target. The small intestine is known as the main site of nutrient absorption in the digestive system and is a key player in the immune response. In the small intestine, there are cells that are responsible for the uptake of nutrients from food that has been ingested, and other cells that manufacture and secrete products that are released to defend the host from harmful elements.

During the study, it was found that both Eimeria and C. perfringens produced damage to structures on the intestine wall that caused chickens to be less efficient by preventing the uptake of nutrients, but especially when they were both introduced to the intestine as commonly seen in the poultry house. We were able to provide a baseline of the effects of a mild infection and insight into intestinal development, turnover of cells in response to the damage, and identified several cellular signaling pathways that were influenced. Eimeria was directly responsible for most of the physical damage in the intestine and C. perfringens influenced different regulatory functions in the interest of its survival. A major find in this study was the decreased expression of a gene that prevents intestinal dysbiosis and pathogen susceptibility. This finding suggests one area that these pathogens may be targeting, turning off a key function in disease prevention.

Determining how these common pathogens in poultry production impact the host at a basic level offers information on how current products are alleviating symptoms and provides a trajectory for further product development to address these issues. Utilizing these outcomes and continuing research in the poultry industry and other species can advance solutions to secure global food security and prevent famine for generations to come.