Not AvailableClimate change acts as a major threat to climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture and
animal husbandry. This change in climate will be a greatest challenge to about 1.3 billion
population who depends on animal husbandry as their livelihood. Heat stress is considered
as one of the primary factors that imposes negative impacts on production and reproduction
in farm animals. In addition, it also alters the immune functions of the animal and makes
them susceptible to infectious diseases. Based on the duration of exposure, heat stress
either enhances or suppresses the immune functions in farm animals. The stress signal
acts mainly through hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis to modulate the immune
response. Generally, it is considered that heat stress acts to shift the adaptive immune
function from cell mediated to humoral immunity and thus weakens the animal immune
function. Another aspect of this climatic change is the threat of emerging and re-emerging
pathogens and disease vectors for which livestock needs fine-tuned immune system to
fight against naïve pathogens. Thus, the heat stress-immune system interactions need to
be studied thoroughly in order to introduce various management and nutritional strategies
to alleviate the ill-effects of heat stress in farm animals.Not Availabl
