{"id":149223,"date":"2022-10-12T10:41:13","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T08:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ew-nutrition.com\/igy-technology-profiting-from-nature-to-support-antibiotic-reduction\/"},"modified":"2024-11-21T16:21:19","modified_gmt":"2024-11-21T15:21:19","slug":"igy-technology-profiting-from-nature-to-support-antibiotic-reduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ew-nutrition.com\/us\/igy-technology-profiting-from-nature-to-support-antibiotic-reduction\/","title":{"rendered":"IgY technology: using nature to support antibiotic reduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr<\/strong>. <\/em>Inge Heinzl<\/strong>, Editor, EW Nutrition\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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For a long time now, IgY technology has been used to provide clear benefits in diagnostics, human medicine, and animal production. To give you a deeper insight into this topic, in the following, we will show you some steps of production, the benefits, and the applications of IgY.<\/p>\n

IgY \u2013 what is it?<\/h2>\n
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IgY (immunoglobulin of the yolk) are immunoglobulins that hens produce to protect their chicks during the first weeks of life against occurring pathogens. They are the equivalent of immunoglobulin G in the colostrum of mammalians. IgY are an entirely natural product; every egg sold in the supermarket contains IgY.<\/p>\n

IgY develops in the hen against the pathogens with which the hens are confronted. Thereby, it does not matter if these pathogens are relevant for the hens. They also produce antibodies against, e. g., bovine, porcine, or human-specific pathogens. This fact was already noticed by Vaillard (1891). He saw that the intraperitoneal injection of tetanus bacteria raised immunity against tetanus bacteria in hens’ serum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A short time later, Klemperer (1892)<\/a><\/span> documented that the serum antibodies were also transferred into the egg. For this purpose, he did a similar trial with hens but collected the eggs. He fed mice a solution containing the egg yolk, and afterward, he infected them with tetanus. All mice with a higher dosage of egg yolk remained healthy, the others receiving a low dosage or no egg yolk died.<\/p>\n

IgY production is a non-invasive and highly effective process<\/h2>\n

The “usual” production of antibodies in mammals includes pain and stress-causing procedures such as immunization, bleeding, and sacrifice. The only stress factor in producing egg antibodies is the hyper-immunization with the pathogen or parts of it; the rest -collecting the eggs- is non-invasive (Ikemori et al., 1993<\/a><\/span>). The European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods<\/a><\/span> (ECVAM) ), one of Europe’s health and consumer protection institutes, strongly recommends egg immunoglobulins as an alternative to mammalian antibodies (Schade et al., 1996<\/a><\/span>).<\/p>\n

IgY production is also advantageous in terms of quantitative and qualitative output. Usually, one egg (with 15 mL of yolk) contains about 100-150 mg IgY\u00a0 (Pereira et al., 2019<\/a><\/span>). Assuming that a hen lays about 300 eggs per year, one bird can produce between 30 and 45 g IgY in this period. After the isolation of the IgY from the egg yolk and the extraction from the remaining proteins, a final purification step that includes chromatography could achieve IgY with >90\u00a0% purity (Morgan et al., 2021<\/a><\/span>).<\/p>\n

Hyperimmunized hens provide more effective IgY<\/h2>\n

The targeted confrontation of the animal with specific pathogens or antigens leads to the production of specific antibodies. In a field trial with piglets, Kellner et al. (1994) compared three groups of piglets suffering from diarrhea on day 1 of the test. One group received egg powder originating from hens hyperimmunized with diarrhea-causing pathogens, the second group egg powder from regular eggs, and the third didn’t receive any egg powder. The following results they achieved in one of two farms. The trial shows that, after applying egg powder with selected antibodies, the animals completely recovered within three days. In the group receiving egg powder of regular eggs, still, 9.1% suffered from severe diarrhea and in the control group without any egg powder, only 27.3 % recovered.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1: Comparison of eggs originating from regular and hyperimmunized hens<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Preconditions for and benefits of industrially produced IgY<\/h2>\n

A process must meet specific requirements to be suitable for industrial production. In the case of IgY production, the crucial preconditions are that\u2026<\/p>\n