Evaluation of Galleria mellonella larvae as an in vivo model for assessing the relative toxicity of food preservative agents.

Larvae of Galleria mellonella are widely used for evaluating the virulence of microbial pathogens and for measuring the efficacy of anti-microbial agents and produce results comparable to those that can be obtained using mammals. In this work, the suitability of using G. mellonella larvae to measure the relative toxicity of a variety of food preservatives was evaluated. The response of larvae to eight commonly used food preservatives (potassium nitrate, potassium nitrite, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, sodium nitrate, sodium chloride, sodium nitrite and sodium acetate) administered by feeding or by intra-haemocoel injection was measured. A significant correlation between the LD50 (R (2) = 0.8766, p = 0.0006) and LD80 (R (2) = 0.7629, p = 0.0046) values obtained due to oral or intra-haemocoel administration of compounds was established. The response of HEp-2 cells to the food preservatives was determined, and a significant correlation (R (2) = 0.7217, p = 0.0076) between the LD50 values of the compounds administered by feeding in larvae with the IC50 values of the compounds in HEp-2 cells was established. A strong correlation between the LD50 values of the eight food preservatives in G. mellonella larvae and rats (R (2) = 0.6506, p = 0.0156) was demonstrated. The results presented here indicate that G. mellonella larvae may be used as a model to evaluate the relative toxicity of food preservatives, and the results show a strong positive correlation to those obtained using established cell culture and mammalian models.