CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Heat stress due to climate change affects the health of organisms. This stressful event predisposes to physiological disorders at different levels, modifying hematological parameters, as well as the activity of digestive functions or the expression of some proteins (e.g. heat shock proteins). Due to this negative effect of heat stress on the animal health, nutritional research has begun to use additives in the diet to mitigate its effect. On the other hand, these additives, such as capsaicine, are used as growth promoters in poultry.The aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of heat stress on the house sparrow and its mitigation by capsaicin (an active component of chili peppers but not irritant in birds) and its effect on digestive enzymes. To achieve our objective, 26 birds were kept in separate cages, with a light/dark photoperiod 12/12hs. Birds were assigned to 4 independent treatments for 3 days: at 22°C without capsaicin (control), 22°C with capsaicin, 32°C without capsaicin and 32°C with capsaicin (control). Capsaicin was administered by gavage every day after the lights were on, at a concentration of 31.25 x 10-3 mg/gr of body mass-1. With water and food ad libitium. Body weight measure, blood extraction and subsequent removal of the intestine were performed at the same time (8:00 am) to avoid disturb by circadian variation. We analyzed the data using a one-way and RM-ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test (p0.1). Studies in animals agree that a variation in 10°C produces stress and uric acid increase, which act as an antioxidant, on organisms under stress, but we found a lack of effect in enzyme activity. Capsaicin proved to be a stress-relieving compound but we are missing an effect on intestinal enzyme activity in contrast with studies in poultry and mammals. Supported by CyT-UNSL PROICO 2-0516 and FONCYT PICT-201?0595.