Evaluation of the protective potentials of Clostridium perfringens NetB toxin-based vaccine in Broiler Chickens

Abstract

Clostridium perfringens is an anaerobic bacterium that causes numerous important human and animal diseases, primarily as a result of its ability to produce many different protein toxins. In chickens, C.perfringens causes necrotic enteritis (NE), a disease of economic importance to the worldwide poultry industry due to mortalities, low growth rate and feed conversion. The current study was conducted to determine the role of C.perfringens in NE in broiler chickens in different farms in Giza Governorate in Egypt. In the present work, a total number of 200 intestinal samples were examined for C.perfringens with conventional diagnostic methods. The descriptive analysis of the collected data for all samples was performed and the results were as follows: • Thirty-five out of 200 samples were positive for C.perfringens with incidence ratio of 17.5 %. • The recovery rate of C.perfringens was 10% and 25% from apparently healthy and diseased chickens, respectively. • Dermonecrotic test and molecular toxinotyping revealed that, the most detected toxinotype of isolated C.perfringens strain was type A (alpha toxin), which appear as irregular area of yellowish necrosis tended to spread downward on guinea pig.