Natural immunostimulants

Natural immunostimulants: ß-glucans

There are many plant extracts traditionally used by their pharmacological properties and some classically recognized to be immunoestimulants, such as ß-glucans.
This molecule has natural origin, specifically is structural components of the cell wall of fungi (mainly ascomycetes and basidiomycetes), yeast, seaweed, bacteria, lichens and some cereal grains like barley and oat. It can be described as linear homo-polymer of glucose linked by ß(1?3), ß(1?4) and ß(1?6) bonds.
Recently, ß-glucans have been described as response modifiers of the immune system, which function as immunostimulant against infectious diseases.
The mode of action of this substance is not totally understood, but the most accepted theory is when ß-glucans are given orally, they are taken up by gastrointestinal macrophages mediated by Dectin-1 receptor, shuttling it to spleen, lymph nodes and bone marrow. There, ß-glucans are break down into smaller fragments, which acts like small biologically active fragments.
In practice, animals supplemented with ß-glucans show an augmentation of phagocytosis and proliferative activities of phagocytes-granulocytes, monocytes, macrophages and dendritic cells, not only against the activator, but also against any present antigen. Moreover, at gastrointestinal level, ß-glucans modulate the immune response of intestinal mucosa cells locally by mean of the Peyer’s patches as well as by mean of intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes.
The use of plant extracts with pharmacological properties are becoming more frequent in the animal nutrition sector in order to deal with the growth promotor antibiotic ban. In this field, ß-glucans are a useful tool to achieve a good immune system status of the animals and, hereof, obtain a high performance during the entire productive life.

In this sense,TECNOVIT presents Immunotec a product based on a mixture of ß-glucans and other immunostimulant substances.

Figure 1. a. Fungal cell wall; b. Macrophage with phagosomes containing myriads of fungi; c. Macrophage phagocyting bacteria.