Immune effector activities and clinical biochemistry of normal pangas catfish Pangasius pangasius (Hamilton, 1822)

The intensive production of catfish is adversely affected by infectious diseases. This study determined the immune effector activities and clinical biochemistry of healthy pangas catfish Pangasius pangasius to ascertain the normal ranges for select non-specific and specific immune parameters as well as serum biomarkers. The ranges for immune effector activities like serum lysozyme (192.00–387.78 U/ml), ceruloplasmin (0.22–0.37 optical density (OD) at 540 nm), anti-protease (3.17–10.22 inhibition %), myeloperoxidase (0.12–0.19 OD at 450 nm), respiratory oxidative burst (0.21–0.56 OD at 540 nm) activities, in-vitro nitric oxide production (130.00–510.00 µM) and in-vitro lymphocyte proliferation upon mitogen (con A) stimulation (0.92–3.81 OD at 540 nm) were documented. The normal values for serum biomarkers like cortisol (30.15-41.94 μg/dl), glucose (140.33-166.02 mg/ml), alanine aminotransferase (9.37-13.20 IU/L), aspartate aminotransferase (112.60-143.20 IU/L), lactate dehydrogenase (380.63-462.80 IU/L), creatinine (0.17-0.26 mg/ml), C-reactive protein (1.81-2.45 mg/L), insulin-like growth factor-1 (8.30-10.64 ng/ml) and insulin-like growth factor binding protein-1 (3.68-4.99 ng/ml) were also established in P. pangasius. Variations in the immune effector activities among the different batches of catfish were observed. These results indicated that the immune effector activities and serum biomarkers levels of P. pangasius are different from other catfish species. The observed baseline values of pangas catfish immune effector activities and serum biomarkers could be used as indicators, which would help interpret the clinical and immune responses during the infections and for developing immunoprophylactic measures.