Could a diet enriched with n-3 highly unsaturated fatty acids be considered a promising way to enhance the immune defences and the resistance of Penaeid prawns to environmental stress?

The prawn Penaeus stylirostris (Stimpson), when fed for 28 days with n-3 highly unsaturated fatty acid (HUFA)-enriched feed pellets, demonstrated an enhanced resistance to variations in environmental parameters (a decrease in temperature and salinity over a 4-day period from 28 degreesC to 17 degreesC and from 35 parts per thousand to 10 parts per thousand respectively) and an improvement in their immune defence potential, i.e. increased agglutination titre of plasma and increased respiratory burst of haemocytes.