Comparative effects of dietary corn, fish and Krill oils on intestinal glycosylation.

Antarctic Krill is considered as a valuable protein resource for animal and human nutrition. Due to the high content of long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids of the n-3 family, Krill consumption could be also interesting in cardiovascular diseases. In the search for the demonstration of the absence of toxicity of Krill, we studied the effect of Krill oil, as compared to fish and corn oil, on the rat intestinal fucosylation process at weaning, a very sensitive model of the influence of nutritional factors. Krill oil containing diets were very well tolerated as compared to other currently used oils and induced only slight modification in fucose and mannose proportions in intestinal glycoprotein sugars. These modifications were not reflected in the enzymatic activities involved in the fucosylation pathway. These results confirm the harmlessness of Krill derived products and their possible use in human nutrition.