ASSESSMENT OF POTENTIAL GENOTOXIC EFFECTS OF SOME COMMONLY USED FLAVORS THROUGH GENETIC AND MOLECULAR SHORT-TERM ASSAYS

Abstract

Recently, multiple types of research and investigations have revealed the genotoxicity potential of food processed by certain kinds of additives despite the respected legal limits of these additives by the manufactures. Food additives are commonly consumed on daily basis, ignoring risk levels accompanied by their consumption at high concentrations or their accumulation in the body. Long-term exposure to food additives may cause several disturbances on human health such as diarrhea, vomiting, migraine, bronchospasm, rhinitis, nausea, anaphylaxis, eczema, urticarial, irritable bowel, migraine, and hyperactivity in children. They were also able to induce damage at the molecular level. In some developing countries, the situation is more complicated since they are still using non-permitted food additives. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the potential genotoxicity and cytotoxicity of two commonly used food additives; diacetyl and butter flavors which are widely used in flavoring using swiss albino mice males and tissue culture (human cell lines). The major results of this investigation could be summarized as follows: 1- MTT (3-(4, 5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay was employed to assess the cytotoxic effect of diacetyl and butter flavors on normal liver cell line (THLE2) cells lines. The viability of the normal liver cell line (THLE2) treated with the flavors was measured. The results showed that diacetyl and butter flavors decreased cell viability in normal liver cell lines as a sign of their cytotoxic effect. The obtained IC50 results for the treated cell line THLE2 suggested that it should be subjected to further investigation.