Dietary exposure to aflatoxin and micronutrient status among young children from Guinea

Abstract

Scope Aflatoxin exposure coincides with micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries. Animal feeding studies have postulated that aflatoxin exposure may be exacerbating micronutrient deficiencies. Evidence available in human subjects is limited and inconsistent. The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between aflatoxin exposure and micronutrient status among young Guinean children. Method and results A total of 305 children (28.8 ± 8.4 months) were recruited at groundnut harvest (rainy season), of which 288 were followed up 6 months later post-harvest (dry season). Blood samples were collected at each visit. Aflatoxin-albumin adduct levels were measured by ELISA. Vitamin A, vitamin E and β-carotene concentrations were measured using HPLC methods. Zinc was measured by atomic absorption spectroscopy. Aflatoxin exposure and micronutrient deficiencies were prevalent in this population and were influenced by season, with levels increasing between harvest and post-harvest. At harvest, children in the highest aflatoxin exposure group, compared to the lowest, were 1.98 (95%CI: 1.00, 3.92) and 3.56 (95%CI: 1.13, 11.15) times more likely to be zinc and vitamin A deficient. Conclusion Although children with high aflatoxin exposure levels were more likely to be zinc and vitamin A deficient, further research is necessary to determine a cause and effect relationship.

Human Biomonitoring of Mycotoxins in Blood, Plasma and Serum in Recent Years: A Review

“…Another shortcoming of ELISA is that it relies on specific antibodies for each mycotoxin; therefore, it is not appropriate for multi-mycotoxin determination. In fact, ELISA was applied in just 15% of all studies reviewed [73][74][75][76][77][78][79].…”

“…To release AFB1-lysine (AFB1-lys) adduct from albumin, proteins in serum samples are digested with Pronase ® for a few hours at 37 • C. AFB1-lys is then extracted and purified with SPE by means of a mixed-mode anion exchange reversed-phase matrix. Next, the analytes are eluted, mainly through the use of methanol (MeOH) with formic acid, then concentrated and reconstituted in the mobile phase before analysis with LC-MS/MS [49,65,81,83,87,[112][113][114][115], LC-FLD [81,[88][89][90][91][92] or ELISA [73][74][75][76][77][78][79]117]. McCoy et al (2008) [70] and Scholl et al (2006) [123] reported good correlations of the concentration levels obtained from ELISA, LC-FLD and LC-MS.…”

“…A number of studies have been carried out to evaluate the presence of AFs in plasma or serum from children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in Kenya [92], Nigeria [49], Tanzania [113,117] Uganda [88,90], Mexico [81,91] and other countries [75,[77][78][79]83,87,114,115]. This is a particularly relevant topic due to the rates of childhood growth disorders in these countries.…”

“…2.3.1. Single-Biomarker Studies.Due to the complexity of the matrices and the physicochemical diversity of mycotoxins, most of the methods currently used to analyze these toxins in human plasma and serum samples focus on assaying one mycotoxin or some structurally related mycotoxins belonging to a single family, such as AFs (AFB1, AFB2, AFG1, AFG2, AFB1-lys)[49,57,64,65,[75][76][77][78][79]81,82,[86][87][88][89][90][91][92][112][113][114][115][116][117], OTA and OTα[54,55,[61][62][63]85,118,119], CIT and DH-CIT[23,[54][55][56] and ZEA and its metabolites[58,68,69].…”

Environmental Health Research in Africa: Important Progress and Promising Opportunities

“…Some findings of significant decrease in vitamin A associated with AF-ALB suggest that aflatoxin exposure compromises the micronutrient status of people who are immunocompromised, including people living with HIV (Obuseh et al, 2011). The interaction between aflatoxin and micronutrient deficiencies warrants more investigation (Watson et al, 2016;Watson et al, 2017).…”