Bioactivities and Safety of Chitin, Chitosan and Their Oligosaccharides

키틴, 키토산 및 그 올리고당의 생리활성 및 안전성

Chinin is the second most plentiful natural polymer. Currently, chitin and chitosan are manufactured commercially in large scale from crab and shrimp shell as fish processing waste. They is being used in many commercial application because of their various functional properties. Chitosan, in particular, is being evaluated as biomedical materials in a number of food and pharmaceutical industries. Despite their potential abilities, the perfect safety had been demonstrated until now. However, the long-term feeding with chitin was not any negative effect the body weights and serum enzymatic activities in mice. And, in rats supplied with $5\%$ of chitosan diet for 450 days, there was no changes of Ca concentration in blood, bone and other organs except for in muscle. Consequently, there was no direct toxicity of chitin and chitosan against some animals such as rat and mouse by recently reports.