title: Safety evaluation of short-term exposure to chitooligomers from enzymic preparation.
abstract: Chitooligomers have significant application to the development of functional foods. This paper evaluated systematically the safety of chitooligomers, which were prepared by enzymatic depolymerization of chitosan. The oral maximum tolerated dose of this chitooligomes was more than 10 g/kg body weight in mice. It had no mutagenicity judged by negative experimental results of Ames test, mouse bone marrow cell micronucleus test and mouse sperm abnormality test. A 30-day feeding study shows that no abnormal symptoms and clinical signs or deaths were found in rats during the test. There were no significant difference in body weight, food consumption and food availability of rats in each test group. No significant differences were found in each hematology value, clinical chemistry value and organ/body weight ratio, either. No abnormality of any organ was found during histopathological examination. It is concluded that short-term ingestion of chitooligomers is of non-toxicity.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Natural Polysaccharides, Xiaogan University, Xiaogan 432100, China. qincaiqin@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Caiqin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Junan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Liansheng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Lintao
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001835:Body Weight / Q000187:drug effects; D048271:Chitosan / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000633:toxicity*; D004435:Eating / Q000187:drug effects; D005260:Female; D006026:Glycoside Hydrolases / Q000378:metabolism*; D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D015162:Micronucleus Tests; D009152:Mutagenicity Tests; D011108:Polymers / Q000378:metabolism; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D013094:Spermatozoa / Q000002:abnormalities / Q000187:drug effects
chemical_list: D011108:Polymers; D048271:Chitosan; D006026:Glycoside Hydrolases; C023305:hemicellulase