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Deoxynivalenol (DON), one of the most abundant trichothecenes found on cereals, has been implicated in mycotoxicoses in both humans and farm animals. Low-dose toxicity is characterized by reduced weight gain, diminished nutritional efficiency, and immunologic effects. The levels and patterns of human food commodity contamination justify that DON consumption constitutes a public health issue. DON stability during processing and cooking explains its large presence in human food. We characterized here DON intoxication by showing that the toxin concomitantly affects feeding behavior, body temperature, and locomotor activity after both per os and central administration. Using c-Fos expression mapping, we identified the neuronal structures activated in response to DON and observed that the pattern of neuronal populations activated by the toxin resembled those induced by inflammatory signals. By real-time PCR, we report the first evidences for a DON-induced central inflammation, attested by the strong upregulation of interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, cyclooxygenase-2, and microsomal prostaglandin synthase-1 (mPGES-1) messenger RNA. However, silencing prostaglandins E2 signaling pathways using mPGES-1 knockout mice, which are resistant to cytokine-induced sickness behavior, did not modify the responses to the toxin. These results reveal that, despite strong similarities, behavioral changes observed after DON intoxication differ from classical sickness behavior evoked by inflammatory cytokines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission may reject the request by a plaintiff in a national follow-on proceeding to access the documents discovered in the context of an EU cartel proceeding.The Court of Justice decided that the European Commission may reject the request by a plaintiff in a national follow-on proceeding to access the documents discovered in the context of an EU cartel proceeding. For the Court of the Justice, there is a general presumption that such an access may jeopardize the interests protected by the regulations implementing the EU antitrust rules. This judgment limits the access to DG COMP's documents defined under CDC v Commission (T-437/08, CDC v Commission, 15 December 2011) and may introduce another standard compared with the test defined under Pfleiderer to access documents detained by national competition authorities (C-360/09, Pfleiderer, 14 June 2011). In these cases, the Court of Justice decided that a plaintiff in a follow-on action could, under the supervision of the national court in charge of the case, access the documents of a national competition authority, including those submitted under the leniency proceeding, if they are necessary to demonstrate the fault and the scope of the damage suffered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]