Circulating zearalenone and its metabolites differ in women due to body mass index and food intake

Abstract

The environmental estrogen, zearalenone (ZEA), is found in the food supply from Fusarium fungal contamination in grains and sometimes used as a growth promoter for beef cattle. Long-term exposure to ZEA and its metabolites may present health risk due to higher estrogenic activity. Serum ZEA metabolites were measured to determine the exposure and the association with food intake in 48 overweight/obese women (52 ± 9 years). The free and conjugated ZEA indicated the highest detection rate of all the metabolites. Conjugated ZEA and total ZEA metabolites were lower (p = 0.02) in overweight/obese than normal weight women, and free metabolites were either the same or showed a trend to be higher. In addition, those with highest (280-480 g/d) compared those with lowest (<115 g/d) meat consumption had higher conjugated serum ZEA metabolite concentrations (p < 0.05). Intakes of other food groups (i.e., dairy, cereal, etc.) were not associated with ZEA metabolites. These findings indicate that ZEA and its metabolites are detectable in nearly all women and concentrations are associated with greater meat intake, and influenced by body mass index. Determining how the food supply influences human concentrations of ZEA metabolites is warranted, as well as determining vulnerable populations.

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

“…In addition, some authors have added an enzymatic de-conjugation method to evaluate phase II metabolites. Plasma or serum samples were incubated with β-glucuronidase, or β-glucuronidase/sulfatase at 37 • C overnight, then the selected extraction procedure was applied [55,64,68,69].…”

“…The introduction of Ultra-LC (UHPLC), characterized by uniform column packing material with a particle size of less than 2-3 µm and new pumps and detectors, has represented an improvement, given that it achieves shorter run times, reduces solvent consumption and improves chromatographic resolution and efficiency. UHPLC was reported in 42.8% of the chromatographic methods summarized in this review [48,53,58,64,65,68,69,[81][82][83].…”

“…In a previous study, no differences between ZEA levels in plasma from control and cancer patients (cervical and breast cancer) was found [137]. Recently, Mauro et al (2018) [68] studied the presence of ZEA and its metabolites in serum samples by performing enzymatic treatment of samples with glucuronidase, followed by purification through SPE columns and analysis by LC-MS/MS. The authors applied this methodology to samples from overweight or obese women in the USA.…”

“…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].…”

Comparative study of stress response, growth and development of uteri in post‐weaning gilts challenged with zearalenone and estradiol benzoate

“…Zearalenone (ZEA) is a non‐steroidal, oestrogenic metabolite of Fusarium fungi (Belhassen et al, ; Othmen, Golli, Abidessefi, & Bacha, ). Zearalenone and its derivatives are widely distributed in rice, wheat and other crops, and these residues in meat and dairy products could pose health risks to humans (Mauro et al, ; Yang et al, ). Studies have shown that the strong oestrogenic and anabolic activities of ZEA induced serious alterations in the reproductive system of laboratory animals and farm livestock such as vulvar swelling, mammary glands hyperplasia, uterine enlargement, and even uterine, vaginal and rectal prolapse (Belli et al, ; Hewitt, Girgis, Brash, & Smith, ; Jiang et al, ).…”