Biochemical, Histological and Ultrastructural Studies on the Effect of Citric acid Supplementation on Aflatoxins-intoxicated Japanese Quail

For poultry farmers and quails producers’, one of the biggest challenges is dealing with natural diet contaminants like mycotoxins. Worldwide, mycotoxins are present in all feed sources, primarily in corn, and they significantly reduce the health, immune function, and performance of birds. For this purpose, the effect of citric acid (CA) supplement on contaminated diet with Aflatoxins (AFL) in the liver biochemical, histological, and ultrastructural studies of male Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix). Influences of experimental diets were assessed in 3 replications of 6 birds each (n = 18 per treatment). Quails two weeks old were assigned into 4 equal groups. The control quails fed only basal diet, AFL group quails were given basal diet contaminated with 2.5 mg AFL/kg diet, citric group quails fed basal diet with 10 g citric acid/Kg, and AFL/citric group quails fed basal diet contaminated with 2.5 mg AFL /Kg and augmented with 10 g/Kg citric acid. After four weeks, feeding AFL to quails induced hepatotoxicity as evidenced by significant decline in body weight, serum albumin and total protein while it significantly increased serum ALT, and AST activities. AFL also induces liver oxidative stress by the elevation of lipid peroxidation and reducing GPx, ADH, SOD and catalase activities. Descriptive hepatic histological and ultrastructural alteration were also noted in the AFL group. Treatment with CA induced an increase in total protein, albumin, SOD, GPx, ADH and significantly decreased ALT and AST activities and MDA level. Moreover, it also improved the histological and ultrastructure alternations induced in the liver of AFL group. It was concluded that supplementation of CA into the AFL polluted diets lessened the adverse influences of AFL on quail’s liver.