Acute and subacute oral toxicity evaluation of Antarctic krill protein in Kunming mice

Abstract

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) protein is widely acknowledged as a potential animal protein source due to its large biomass with excellent nutritional and utilisation properties. However, safety assessments of Antarctic krill protein (AKP) are highly warranted before its use as human food. The present work thus assessed the safety of AKP in a Kunming mice model through acute toxicity and a 28-day feeding study, where the Kunming mice were fed with AKP or control diets. In the acute toxicity study, a single oral dose of 10 g/kg bodyweight (BW) AKP caused no death or abnormal effects in male and female mice, and the bodyweight gain remained within the normal range. In the repeated dose 28-day oral toxicity study, AKP was orally administered to Kunming mice at the doses of 2.5, 5.0, and 10.0 g/kg BW/day for 28 days. The absolute and relative liver weight gained was only observed in the mice administered with high-dose of AKP. However, this increase was incidental as no weight gain or histopathological alterations were observed in the main groups. These findings were consistent with the normal background lesions in the clinically normal mice used in the present work, which were considered spontaneous and/or incidental in nature and unrelated to the treatment. These results demonstrated that AKP did not exert significant acute and subacute toxicity upon oral administration to Kunming mice.