Clinicopathological Studies on the Ameliorative Effects of Selenium and Vitamin E against Cadmium Toxicity in Chickens

Abstract

Cadmium (Cd) is one of the most dangerous environmental bioaccumulative heavy metals that concern a vital interest due to its injurious to animal and public health. An experimental trial was conducted for six weeks to evaluate the protective effect of selenium and /or vitamin E against the adverse effect of cadmium. One hundred and five, one day old broiler chicks were divided into five random groups.  Group1 (negative control) was fed on basal diet; Group 2 was supplemented with 100 mg of cadmium /kg diet; Group 3 was supplied with 0.5 mg/kg diet of selenium; Group 4 was fed on 100 mg/kg diet of vitamin E and Group 5 was supplemented with Cd, Se and vitamin E combinations. The results revealed that cadmium group showed a highly significant increase in serum alanine amino transferase (ALT) and aspartate amino transferase (AST) (36±1.1and 220±3.53, respectively) activities, serum uric acid and creatinine (25.68±1.01 and 4.38±0.15, respectively) and a significant decrease in serum total proteins, albumin and globulins values (2.34±0.09, 1.14±0.05 and1.20±0.05, respectively) particularly at the end of the sixth week in comparable to the control group. In addition, a significant increase in serum malondialdehyde (MDA) and nitric oxide (NO) (3.9±0.09 and 51.33±0.88, respectively), a significant decrease in glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX) values (0.05±0.005) associated with a significant reduction in interleukin 2 (IL2) and interleukin 10 (IL10) (1.8±0.30 and 7.4±0.43, respectively) values were reported specially at the end of the sixth week compared with the control group. Overall, our results showed an improvement in groups supplied with either Se or vitamin E when compared with cadmium group. In conclusion, supplementation of selenium or vitamin E alone didn’t recover the depressive effect of Cd but their combination could improve its deleterious effect due to their antioxidant activity.