HP and infection: In addition, we observed significantly lower haptoglobin concentration in treatment groups D and E compared to the reference diet, that is, treatment A. Although intersample variability was high in treatment A, the results suggest that treatment D and E resulted in a different inflammatory response compared to treatment A. Higher haptoglobin concentrations reflect inflammatory or infection status due to microbes (pathogenic bacterial, protozoal or viral loads) in broiler chickens (Garcia et al., 2009; Georgieva et al., 2010; Asasi et al., 2013).