THE THROMBOCYTES AS AN IMMUNE INDICATOR

	THE THROMBOCYTES AS AN IMMUNE INDICATOR
Iraqi Journal of Biotechnology
Article 1, Volume 8, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 578-588
Abstract
This study investigated the effect of vaccine as an immune enhancing on chicken thrombocyte number. Also the relation between thrombocytes and other blood cells like erythrocytes and leukocytes were studied in regard to age. A total of 100 broiler chicks of one day old were used in this study. They were divided equally into two groups. One group was kept without vaccination and the other one was vaccinated twice against Newcastle disease at 7 and 20 days of age. During the whole experiment which is lasted for eight weeks, blood samples were collected daily for the first two weeks and weekly for the other six weeks. Thrombocytes, erythrocytes and leukocytes number were calculated for both groups. The results show a significant increase in thrombocyte number as well as in leukocytic number post vaccination. Beside that a high correlation coefficient is reported between thrombocyte and leukocyte in both vaccinated and control groups (99.8% and 97.5 %, respectively). The three cell types increase gradually from the first day of age and as the animal grows up. They seem to stabilize at the fourth week of age. On conclusion, these results investigate the role of thrombocytes in immunity. Certainly, the over all results reflect that we could depend on thrombocytes as an indicator of stress as much as the H/L ratio. It could be an indicator of the physiological and immunological state of the animal. Further studies are needed to investigate the role of thrombocytes in some immune-supressive diseases.
Keywords
Thrombocytes; Immunity

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