Toxic Effect of Green Leaf Color as Food Dye on Liver, Kidney, and Intestinal Tissues in Animal Mice Model

Abstract

Food dye is a synthetic chemical that restores natural color that is lost during processing and enhances the color, flavor, and taste of food. It mostly affects youngsters and produces a variety of health issues. This investigation was conducted to examine the deleterious effects of the unclassified dye "green leaf color" on the liver, kidney, and intestine tissues of a mouse model. Fifteen adult mice were separated into two groups: control and treatment. The treatment groups were fed standard poultry feed with dye in 20µl and 10µl (1.0mg/kg/bw and 2.0mg/kg/bw, respectively). At the conclusion of the 90 days experiment, animals were euthanized and sacrificed, and pieces of liver, kidneys, and intestine were collected and histologically processed for visualization under a light microscope. Feeding of green leaf color induced a range of histological changes in all treated mice compared with their control group. Results from the histopathological examination showed mainly vacuolization of renal tubules, raising space between the walls of Bowman’s capsule, shrinkage of glomeruli and glomerular necrosis, congestion of tubules, inflammatory cellular infiltration, dilation of tubular lumen, and hemorrhage in renal tissues. In the case of the liver, congestion of the central vein, vacuolization of hepatic cells, pyknotic nuclei, karyorrhexis, karyolysis, and inflammatory cellular infiltration were observed. Similarly, significant histopathological alterations were identified in the intestinal section including disrupted brush border, necrosis, vacuolization, swelling, uncontrolled cell proliferation, disrupted mucosa, and submucosa. Therefore, we strongly recommend here the ban of unclassified dye green leaf color to use as a color additive.