Protective effects of feed additives on broiler chickens exposed to aflatoxins-contaminated feed: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Aflatoxin contamination in feed is a common problem in broiler chickens. The present systematic review and meta-analysis examined the impact of aflatoxin-contaminated feed and the efficacy of various feed additives on the production performance of broiler chickens fed aflatoxin-contaminated feed (AF-feed). A total of 35 studies comprising 53 AF-feed experiments were selected following PRISMA guidelines. Feed additives included in the analyses were toxins binder (TB), mannanoligosaccharides (MOS), organic acid (OA), probiotics (PRO), protein supplementation (PROT), phytobiotics (PHY), and additive mixture (MIX). Random effects model and a frequentist network meta-analysis (NMA) were performed to rank the efficacy of feed additives, reported as standardized means difference (SMD) at 95 confidence intervals (95 CI). Overall, broiler chickens fed AF-feed had significantly lower final body weight (BW) (SMD=198; 95 CI=198 to 238) and higher feed conversion ratio (SMD=0.17; 95 CI=0.13 to 0.21) than control. Treatments with TB, MOS, and PHY improved the BW of birds fed AF-feed (P<0.05) to be comparable with non-contaminated feed or control. Predictions on final BW from the broiler-fed aflatoxin-contaminated diet were 15 lower than the control diet. Including feed additives in the aflatoxins diet could ameliorate the depressive effect. Remarkably, our network meta-analysis highlighted that TB was the highestperforming additive (P-score=0.797) to remedy aflatoxicosis. Altogether, several additives, especially TB, are promising to ameliorate aflatoxicosis in broiler chickens, although the efficacy was low regarding the severity of the aflatoxicosis.

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