Abstract: OBJECTIVE: To investigate acute and genetic toxicity of Zihe herbal solid beverage in mice. METHODS: Foracute oral toxicity test, male and female mice (10 mice per group) were orally administered a cumulative dose is 10 g/(kg·d) for the determination of mortality, LD₅₀ and maximum tolerated dose. Three assays were used for determination of genetic toxicity:Ames test (using tablet adding method with 5 000, 1 000, 200, 40 and 8 μg/plate);spermatogonia chromosome aberration test[2000, 1000 and 500 mg/(kg·d) dose groups];erythrocytes micronucleus test[2000, 1000 and 500 mg/(kg·d) dose groups]. Moreover, negative control and positive control groups were used for the 3 genotoxicity tests. RESULTS: After 14 days of observation, no acute toxicity effect was observed in the exposed mice. From the Ames tests, the number of revertant colonies of TA97, TA98, TA100, TA102 strains were not significantly different compared with those from the negative control group. Chromosome aberration test showed that the sperm abnormality rate was 0-1.6% which was not significantly different compared with the control group (0.6%, P>0.05). The mammalian erythrocytes micronucleus test showed that there was no significant difference compared with the control group (P>0.05). CONCLUSION: Under our experimental conditions, the Zihe herbal solid beverage did not induce any obvious acute or genetic toxicity in mice.

Key words: Zihe herbal solid beverage, acute toxicity, genetic toxicity, chromosome aberration test, Ames test