Octopamine enhances the immune responses of freshwater giant prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii, via octopamine receptors.

Octopamine (OA) is known to play an important role in regulating insect immune responses. In Macrobrachium rosenbergii (18.0 ± 1.7 g), OA at 25.0 and 250.0 pmol/prawn significantly increased THC, semigranular cells (SGCs) and PO activity in hemocytes per 50 μL hemolymph, hyaline cells, granular cells (GCs) and RBs in hemocytes per 10 μL hemolymph, and RBs per hemocyte, and however, significantly decreased PO activity per granulocyte (GC + SGC), which returned to control levels after 4 h of injection. The significantly increased phagocytic activity and clearance efficiency of prawn received OA for 8 h returned to control levels after 16 h of injection. In addition, the significantly increased glucose and decreased lactate were observed within 1 h of OA injection. In the susceptibility test, prawn received OA at 25.0 or 250.0 pmol/prawn for 2 h then challenged with Lactococcus garvieae at 10 colony-forming units/prawn significantly increased the resistance of prawns by 23.3% and 30.0%, respectively, compared to the saline-challenged control after 144 h of challenge. In addition, the changes on immunocompetence induced by OA were observed to be blocked by adrenoceptors antagonists. These results suggest that OA administration at 250.0 pmol/prawn or less causes the mediate a transient up-regulation in immune and physiologic responses to promote the resistance of M. rosenbergii to L. garvieae, which are thought to be mediated by α- and β-adrenergic-like octopamine receptors.