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Effects of Alfalfa Saponins on Cholesterol Metabolism in Broilers

Ting Liu, Zhentian Li, Tengfei Wang and Xiaoyan Zhu

This experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of different levels alfalfa saponins on cholesterol metabolism in broilers. A total of 320 Arbor Acres (AA) broilers of 1 day-old were randomly allotted to 4 treatments with five replicates in each treatment, and with 16 broilers in each replicate. The experiment last 49 days. During the stage from 0 to 3 weeks, broilers in the control group were fed basal diet and birds in the test groups were all fed the basal diets added with 0.02% alfalfa saponins. while from 4 to 7 weeks, birds in the test groups were fed the basal diets added with 0.04%, 0.08% and 0.12% alfalfa saponins, respectively. The results showed that: Supplemented 0.08% and 0.12% alfalfa saponins to broilers diets could significantly decrease cholesterol content of serum and liver (P<0.05), increased HDL-C content in serum and bile acids content in feces (P<0.05), highly decreased LDL-C content and HMG-CoAreductase mRNA abundance (P<0.01), implicating alfalfa saponins could block enterohepatic circulation of bile acids, thus supress the synthesis of cholesterol to some extent. 0.08% alfalfa saponins also could significantly reduce insulin content in serum (P<0.05). Added moderate alfalfa saponins to broilers feed could reduce TG content and Hydrocortisone content in serum to a certain extent, effectively improve cholesterol metabolism.