Effect of Ochratoxin A and Aristolochic Acid on a Porcine Kidney Cell Line

The Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN) is an irreversible, chronic, tubulo-interstitial nephropathy described so far in several rural regions from the Balkan with an unknown aetiology. Both ochratoxin A (OTA) and aristolochic acid (AA) are considered responsible for BEN. This paper performed a comparison between the toxic effect of OTA and AA using a kidney cell line LLC-PK. OTA and AA decreased cell viability in a dose dependent manner. The dose dependent effect was observed for both toxins, the doses higher than 5mg/mL inducing a significant inhibition of viability (P<0.05) in AA and OTA treated cells, when compared with control. For doses higher than 50mg/mL, the toxicity of AA was higher than the OTA cytotoxicity. A slight decrease of IL-8 was observed after 6h, for OTA, while AA slightly increase the IL-8 synthesis. After 24h, IL-8 synthesis was decreased by both toxins, AA having a more pronounced effect than OTA. IL-10 synthesis was not affected by the treatment of both toxins. In conclusion, both OTA and AA negatively affect LLC-PK cells viability and capacity to synthesize IL-8, with AA being more toxic than OTA for the highest concentrations used in this study

The Impact of Dietary Grape Seed Meal on Healthy and Aflatoxin B1 Afflicted Microbiota of Pigs after Weaning

The study investigated the effect of grape seed (GS) meal, aflatoxin (AFB1), or their combination on the large intestine microbiota of weanling piglets. Twenty-four piglets were allocated into four groups based on diet composition: (1) Control group; (2) AFB1 (320 g/kg feed) group; (3) GS group (8% inclusion in the diet); (4) AFB1 + GS group. After 30 days of experiment, the colon content was used for microbiota analyses; after isolation of total bacterial genomic DNA, V3/V4 regions of the 16S rRNA amplicons were sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq platform. The raw sequences were analyzed using the v.1.9.1 QIIME pipeline software. 157 numbers of OTUs were identified among all four dietary groups with 26 of them being prevalent above 0.05% in the total relative abundance. GS and AFB1 increase the relative abundance of phylum Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria, while decreasing the Firmicutes abundance in a synergic manner as compared with the individual treatments. An additive or synergistic action of the two treatments was identified for Lactobacillus, Prevotella and Campylobacter, while rather an antagonistic effect was observed on Lachnospira. The action mechanisms of aflatoxin B1 and grape seed meal that drive the large intestine microbiota to these changes are not known and need further investigations