Effect of Supplementation of Diet with Ferula assafoetida Hydoalkohalic Extract on Immune Related (IL-1? and TNF-alpha)

B>Inroduction & Due to the increased bacterial resistance to common antibiotics, there is tendency towards using herbal extracts in order to increase the non-specific immune system. The aim of present study was to investigate the effect of hydroalkohalic extract of Ferula assafoetida on expression of genes related to immune (IL-1β and TNF-alpha) in Zebrafish.
Material and For this purpose zebrafish with average weight of 0.3±0.1 gr, were fed diets supplemented with 3 different levels of Ferula extract (0.5, 1 and 2%) and one control group for 8 weeks. At the end of feeding trial, RNA extracted from intestine, cDNA syntesised and Real-time PCR were done using IL-1β and TNF-alpha primers.
Results showed the increase in expression of both genes in fish fed 2% Ferula, which was significant with other group (0.5% and 1%) in TNF-alpha (P0.05) among fish fed ferula extracts, though the highest gene expression was seen in 2% Ferula.
According to results, it seems that using Ferula assafoetida hydroalkohalic extract could improve Zebrafish immune with increase of relative gene expression of inflammatory cytokine.