Rong et al. (2009) conducted a 35-day toxicity study on ginger in rats. Both male and female rats were daily treated with ginger powder at the dosages of 500, 1,000 and 2,000 mg/kg body weight by gavage for 35 days. The results demonstrated that chronic administration of ginger was not associated with any mortalities or abnormalities in general conditions, behavior, growth, and food and water consumption.
Except for dose-related decrease in serum lactate dehydrogenase activity in males, ginger treatment induced similar hematological and blood biochemical parameters to those of controlled animals. In general, ginger treatment caused no overt organ abnormality. Only at a very high dose (2,000 mg/kg), ginger led to slightly reduced absolute and relative weights of testes (by 14.4% and 11.5%, respectively).
