The procyanidin-rich extract from grape seeds and skins (GSSE) has antioxidant properties which may have cardioprotective effects. Since it might be interesting to incorporate this extract into a functional food, toxicological tests need to be made to determine how safe it is. In this study we carried out a limit test to determine the acute oral toxicity and the lethal dose 50 (LD50) and some genotoxicity tests of the extract in rats. The LD50 was higher than 5000 mg/kg. Doses of up to 2000 mg/kg showed no increase in micronucleated erythrocytes 72 h after treatment. The bacterial reverse mutation test showed that the extract was weakly mutagenic to the dose of 5 mg/plate and 19.5 and 9.7 μg/ml of GSSE did not show significant differences in the frequency of aberrant metaphases in relation to negative controls. Our results indicated slight mutagenicity under the study conditions, so further studies should be conducted at lower doses to demonstrate that this extract is not toxic.
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