Fish larvae: an alternative animal model for testing the toxicity of food additives

Abstract

Concerns regarding the properties and potential hazardous effects of food additives are increasing. Food additives are widely used because they improve the taste, texture, color and shelf life of food. While commonly consumed worldwide, food additives have begun to raise more concerns regarding their impact on human health and the environment. Thus, new extensive but animal-minimized testing strategies are needed to highlight the short- and long-term effects of the many food additives. Thus, it was necessary to find alternatives for toxicology studies, such as ex vivo/in vitro testing, embryos and larvae that have external fertilization and external embryonic or larval development. There are many studies that highlight the usefulness of non-mammalian models, such as fish embryos and larvae. Fish embryos and larvae are preferred for in vivo studies because they have numerous advantages, such as external and short-term development, embryos and larvae are transparent, and genes, receptors and molecular processes are highly conserved between human and fish. In this review article we aimed to highlight the studies that tested the toxic effects of food additives on fish larvae, the toxicological parameters necessary to establish toxicity and the most common anomalies in fish larvae caused by food additives.