In Vitro Assessment of Berberine against in Goldfish.

is a pathogenic ciliate parasite, which infects almost all freshwater teleost fish and leads to significant economic losses. The present study aimed to evaluate the acute toxicity of berberine to the free-living stages of , that is, theronts and tomonts. Our results indicated that 99.30% of theronts were killed by a concentration of 15 mg/L berberine during the 4 h exposure time, while berberine had no effect on protomonts. Nevertheless, berberine at a concentration of 5 mg/L could effectively reduce the release of theronts from tomonts treated for 4 h. Additionally, according to the transmission electron microscopy results, berberine at 15 mg/L could strongly change the shape of protomonts, destroy their organelles, and significantly decrease the number of ribosomes. The median lethal concentration (LC) of berberine for goldfish at 96 h was 528.44 mg/L, which was almost 67 times the median effective concentration (EC) of berberine for killing theronts (7.86 mg/L). The results demonstrated that berberine could be an effective and safe potential parasiticide for killing .