To assess the effects of administra

To assess the effects of administration of essential oilsbased phytobiotic Intebio and SE challenge on functional state and welfare of laying hens, a correlationanalysis was performed between the expression data of eight genes and 23 blood biochemical/immunological parameters (Table 1) obtained for 24 females of the Lohmann White cross in a study as previously describedby Dubrovin et al. (2019). In short, the experiment included chickens over 300 days old that were subjected to infection with a SE epizootic strain and Intebio supplementation in the diet. The phytobiotic intakeexperiment was started at 346 days of age of layer hens, and at 367 days of age they were inoculated with the SE strain. At 1-day post infection, tissue samples of the hens’ caecum were taken for the further laboratory analysis and used for gene expression examination.