The Effect of Feeding Sulfanilamide to the Laying Fowl

THE well-established indications for sulfonamide therapy in chickens are the curative treatment of Hemophiluscoryza with sulfathiazole, Delaplane and Stuart (1941), and the prophylactic treatment of coccidiosis with sulfaguanidine, Levine (1941) and Allen and Farr (1943). Sulfanilamide has been credited by Levine (1940) with a limited coccidiostatic effect, but its reputed toxicity to birds has retarded its practical application. Cardoso, Nobrega and Reis (1938) found parenteral injections of sulfanilamide in oil to be an effective adjuvant to fowl cholera vaccination, but Reis (1939) hesitated to recommend the method widely because of the short duration of the resulting immunity and the enhanced possibility of producing carrier birds. Interest in sulfanilamide is justified since it is one of the few sulfonamide drugs that readily passes the blood-brain barrier and thereby offers the possibility of therapeutically influencing the central nervous system. In a comparative study of the effect of sulfonamides on 8- to 26-week-old . . .