Chronic feeding study of deoxynivalenol in B6C3F1 male and female mice

A 2 year feeding study was conducted with male and female B6C3F1 mice that consumed diets containing 0, 1, 5, or 10 ppm deoxynivalenol (DON). Survivability was good and, while the test animals gained less weight with increasing levels of DON in the diet, there were no consistent toxic manifestations associated with DON consumption. There was some evidence for an increase in serum IgA and IgG in females, and there were sporadic changes noted in the clinical chemistry and hematology parameters conducted at the terminal sacrifice. However, these changes were not considered to be biologically significant. The pathology results provided statistically significant dose-related evidence for a decrease in liver preneoplastic and neoplastic lesions as the dose level of DON increased. This negative trend probably results from the known positive correlation between body weight and the appearance of spontaneous hepatic neoplasms in this strain of mouse. (C) 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.