Acute Toxicity Study of Tomato Pomace Extract in Rodent

Tomato and tomato products are considered to be healthy food for the human diet. Although tomatoes have been widely studied for their phenolic content, less emphasize has been laid on toxicological effect of this plant. Thus, the purpose of the present study is to determine the acute toxicity effect of Lycopersicon esculentum, or commonly known as tomato, was administered orally in the form of dried tomato pomace extract in vivo. Adult male rats were orally administrated single dose of 1000 and 5000 mg kg dried tomato pomace extract. There were 10 rats in each group. All animals were sacrificed after 2 weeks of treatment. Seven parameters were tested: cage side observation, body weight gain measurement, food and water consumption, absolute organ weight, hematology, biochemical analysis and histopathology, to look for evidence of acute toxicity. No mortality was observed when varying doses of the extracts were administered per day for a period of 2 weeks. There were no significant differences in body weight, behavior, food consumption, absolute organ weights between controls and treated animals. Hematological analysis showed no differences in most parameters examined. In the biochemistry parameter measurement, no significant change occurred. Pathologically, neither gross abnormalities nor histopathological changes were observed. These finding suggest that none of the organs appeared to be target and the data could provide satisfactory preclinical evidence of safety to launch clinical trial on standardized formulation of tomato pomace extracts to be the dietary supplement.