The use of food
dyes is at least controversial because they are only of essential role. Moreover many of them have been related to health problems mainly in children that are considered a very vulnerable group. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of
oral administration of Amaranth,
Sunset Yellow and
Curcumin for 4 weeks at doses of 47, 315 and 157.5 mg/kg b. wt. and after 2 weeks all animals were immunostimulated by intra peritoneal injection of sheep RBCs 10% (1 ml/rat).
Body weight, relative
body weight, total and differential leukocytes count, mononuclear cell count,
delayed hypersensitivity, total
protein and serum fractions were determined. Results revealed that
oral administration of Amaranth,
Sunset Yellow and
Curcumin did not affect the
body weight gain or the spleen weight. On the other hand
Sunset Yellow and
Curcumin significantly decreased the weight of thymus gland of the rats. Total leukocyte count were not affected while Amaranth and
Curcumin-treated rats revealed a significant decrease in neutrophiles and monocytes and a compensatory increase in lymphocytes. Moreover,
oral administration of
Sunset Yellow revealed a significant decrease in monocyte percent. Amaranth,
Sunset Yellow and
Curcumin significantly decreased the delayed hyper sensitivity. Total
serum protein,
albumin, total
globulin and
albumin/
globulin (A/G) ratio were not affected by administration of the colouring agents.
Oral administration of Amaranth increases the density of
albumin band. On the other hand
oral administration of
Curcumin decreases the density of the
albumin band.
Oral administration of any of the tested colouring agents did not change the density of
globulin region as compared to control group. In conclusion we found that both synthetic (Amaranth and
Sunset Yellow) and natural (
Curcumin) colouring agents used at doses up to 10 times the acceptable daily intake exerted a depressing effect on the cellular but not humoral immune response.