Immunomodulating Effect of Probiotics in Clarias batrachus

Probiotics, live microorganism confer health benefits and helps in enhancing immune responses, when administered in feed. Therefore, it is defined as microbial dietary adjuvents that beneficially affect the host physiology by modulating mucosal and systemic immunity, as well as improving nutritional and microbial balance in the intestinal tract. Nowadays, probiotics are also becoming an integral part of the aquaculture practices to obtain high production and administration of probiotics to fish through the diet has appeared as a very promising control measure in fish farms. In aquaculture, the range of probiotics evaluated for use is considerably wider than in terrestrial agriculture. Different probiotics either monospecies or multispecies supplementation can eventually elevate phagocytic, lysozyme, complement, respiratory burst activity as well as expression of various cytokines in fish. Similarly, probiotics can stimulate the gut immune system of fish with marked increase in the number of Ig+ cells and acidophilic granulocytes.