Natural Adsorbents as Therapeutic Candidates Against Necrotic Enteritis in Poultry: A Conceptual Review

Necrotic enteritis (NE), primarily associated with Clostridium perfringens, remains a major enteric disease in poultry production, particularly under reduced-antibiotic and antibiotic-free systems. Natural adsorbents, including biochar, clay minerals, and graphite-based materials, have attracted interest because of their capacity to interact with toxins, microbial metabolites, pathogens, and the intestinal environment. This conceptual review synthesizes current evidence on the physicochemical and biological properties of these materials and evaluates their potential relevance to NE mitigation. Biochar and clay minerals have stronger poultry-related evidence, particularly for mycotoxin adsorption, gut microbial modulation, and performance responses, whereas graphite remains an emerging candidate supported mainly by in vitro, non-poultry, and graphite-derivative literature. Across all three adsorbent classes, direct evidence for NetB-specific adsorption is currently absent, making this a central research gap rather than an established mechanism. Therefore, this review proposes a structured evaluation pipeline integrating material characterization, in vitro toxin-binding and epithelial response assays, and in vivo poultry NE outcomes such as lesion scores, CP burden, barrier integrity, inflammation, oxidative stress, microbiome shifts, and growth performance. Overall, natural adsorbents should be viewed as promising but incompletely validated candidates requiring standardized, NE-specific testing before therapeutic or commercial application.