Nutrition and food safety

TOPIC

Nutrition and food safety

Nutrition and food safety

Nutrition is one main exposure to chemical and microbiological risks that can produce effects on men’s and animals health. The size of the global food industry, its production volume, the technologies for transforming raw materials and their connections with environmental problems, all of them are a major threat to the food chain with risks to the food safety. Nutrition is also the way we get nutrients for our life and wellbeing. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one third of cardiovascular and oncological diseases can be prevented by eating healthy, and each year an estimated 600 millions people in the world fall ill after consuming contaminated food.

Integrating and covering all aspects of the relationship between food and health on the whole food chain, from production to consumption, is the driving principle of the European policy and that followed by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS, the National Institute of Health in Italy) in a uniform and interdisciplinary way in the field of food safety, food-borne diseases (FBD), diet-related diseases, and prevention of chronic degenerative diseases.

The ISS research generates knowledge that inform public health actions on chemical and microbiological aspects of food safety, prevention and control of zoonoses and FBD, emerging toxicological risks (endocrine disruptors, nanotechnologies), healthy eating habits as the Mediterranean diet, coeliac disease, food allergies and intolerances, and nutrition strategies to prevent obesity and non-communicable chronic diseases.

ISS hosts national and European Reference Laboratories that provide coordination assistance in numerous fields of food safety, carry on training, consultancy and assessment activities to support the National Health Service (SSN), and participate with its experts to many national and international bodies as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the Codex Alimentarius, and the European Committee for Standardization (CEN).



Back Approccio combinato per lo studio della tossicità e della genotossicità in vivo delle micotossine beauvericina (BEA) e enniatina B (ENNB)

Le micotossine sono sostanze tossiche prodotte dal metabolismo secondario di alcuni funghi filamentosi o muffe (Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium, Stachyobotris, Cephalosporium, ecc.). La beauvericina (BEA) e enniatina B (ENNB) sono micotossine emergenti presenti in alimenti e mangimi.

Rispondendo ad una specifica richiesta dell’ Autorità europea per la sicurezza alimentare (EFSA) il gruppo di tossicologia del Centro di Riferimento per la Medicina di Genere si è occupato di colmare un vuoto conoscitivo stabilendo i valori di riferimento necessari alla valutazione del rischio tossicologico (per scaricare il report completo visitare il sito EFSA.

La problematica è stata affrontata attraverso un approccio integrato con modelli che utilizzano linee cellulari e animali da laboratorio, che ha previsto:

  1. studi in vitro e studi in vivo a breve termine per gli effetti genotossici 
  2. somministrazione orale a dosi ripetute delle 2 micotossine a topi maschi e femmine, focalizzato sugli effetti genotossici e sui sistemi immunitario, endocrino e nervoso con uno screening per la tossicità riproduttiva e dello sviluppo

I risultati della ricerca hanno permesso di definire parametri tossicologici di riferimento, per BEA e ENNB, per gli animali adulti maschi e femmine e specifici per le fasi di gravidanza e sviluppo.

 

Bibliograifa
Francesca Maranghi, Roberta Tassinari, Laura Narciso, Sabrina Tait, Cinzia La Rocca, Gabriella Di Felice, Cinzia Butteroni, Silvia Corinti, Bianca Barletta, Eugenia Cordelli, Francesca Pacchierotti, Patrizia Eleuteri, Paola Villani, Ludovic Le Hegarat, Valérie Fessard, Océane Reale (2018). In vivo toxicity and genotoxicity of beauvericin and enniatins. Combined approach to study in vivo toxicity and genotoxicity of mycotoxins beauvericin (BEA) and enniatin B (ENNB). External Scientific Report 
 


Dipartimenti/Centri/Servizi

Centres Center of reference for gender medicine National center for drug research and evaluation

Target

Healthcare professional Information specialist

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Document

Topics

Gender and health Gender-specific toxicology Nutrition and food safety Chemical and toxicological food safety Climate, environment and health Chemical and biological contaminants