SHORT COMMUNICATION
Oxytetracycline-Protein Complex: The Dark Side of Pet Food
Alessandro Di Cerbo1, 2, *, Antonio Scarano2, Federica Pezzuto3, Gianandrea Guidetti4, Sergio Canello5, Diego Pinetti6, Filippo Genovese6, Lorenzo Corsi1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 11
First Page: 162
Last Page: 169
Publisher ID: TOPHJ-11-162
DOI: 10.2174/1874944501811010162
Article History:
Received Date: 09/01/2017Revision Received Date: 27/03/2018
Acceptance Date: 08/04/2018
Electronic publication date: 30/04/2018
Collection year: 2018

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Worldwide antibiotic abuse represents a huge burden, which can have a deep impact on pet and human health through nutrition and medicalization representing another way of antibiotic resistance transmission.
Objective:
We aimed our research to determine a possible complex formation between biological bone substrates, such as proteins, and Oxytetracycline (OTC), an approved antibiotic for use in zootechny, which might determine a toxic effect on K562 cells.
Method:
Cell viability and HPLC-ESI/QqToF assays were used to assess potential toxicity of bone extract derived from OTC-treated chickens according to standard withdrawal times and from untreated chickens at 24, 48 and 72h of incubation.
Results:
Cell culture medium with ground bone from chickens reared in the presence of OTC (OTC-CCM) resulted significantly cytotoxic at every incubation time regardless of the bone concentration while cell culture medium with ground bone from chickens reared without OTC (BIO-CCM) resulted significantly cytotoxic only after 72h of incubation. HPLC-ESI/QqToF assay ruled out the possible presence of OTC main derivatives possibly released by bone within culture medium until 1 μg/mL.
Conclusion:
The presence of a protein complex with OTC is able to exert a cytotoxic effect once released in the medium after 24-48h of incubation.