Decontamination of Aflatoxin B1

Abstract

Aflatoxins are a class of highly toxic carcinogenic mycotoxins by food contaminant Aspergillus fungi: Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Aflatoxins are classified into four compounds: aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), aflatoxin B2 (AFB2), aflatoxin G1 (AFG1), and aflatoxin G2 (AFG2), while AFB1 is the most potent carcinogenic agent associated with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Aspergillus fungi is ubiquitously found in the soil and contaminates the crops such as maize, groundnuts, rice, and so on. Prevention of aflatoxin contamination, detection and degradation of Aspergillus fungi contamination, and the concentration of AFB1 in the foodstuffs are of the primary task to prevent health problems from aflatoxin. Here, the different ways are summarized to degrade or decontaminate the aflatoxins available with the foods. Traditional decontamination of aflatoxin includes physical (heat and irradiation), biological, and chemical treatments. However, these traditional aflatoxin decontamination technologies are not enough to remove the aflatoxin from the foods. Recently, some novel processing approached have been explored to achieve full degradation of the aflatoxin available with the foodstuffs, like microwave heating, gamma and electron beam irradiation, pulsed light, electrolyzed water, cold plasma, and so on. Decontamination mechanism, degradation efficiency, advantages, and limitations of these new technologies shall be discussed herein.

Worldwide aflatoxin contamination of agricultural products and foods: From occurrence to control

“…Various chemical products have been tested for their aflatoxin degradation and detoxification ability. These including oxidizing agents, reducing agents, acids, bases, among other chemical products (Yang, 2019). In terms of bases used in the detoxification of aflatoxin, ammonia treatment is an extensively studied aflatoxin degradation technique often reporting high degradation rates (Weng et al., 1994).…”

Toxicological and Medical Aspects of Aspergillus-Derived Mycotoxins Entering the Feed and Food Chain

“…There is also a more complex side of the reduction of mycotoxins by gamma irradiation. Especially in the case of high starting toxin concentration, radiolytic mycotoxin forms may be generated due to irradiation (Wang et al, 2011;Yang, 2019). Although the toxicological effects of the intact toxins and their radiolytic decomposition derivatives were compared, the radiolytes had significantly less impact on human health; the possible toxicological effects of the latter need further investigations.…”

Aflatoxin B1-DNA adducts modify the effects of post-operative adjuvant transarterial chemoembolization improving hepatocellular carcinoma prognosis

“…This may be because of the several reasons. First, increasing amount of ADAs in tumor tissues usually indicates the low capacity of detoxicating enzymes [ 12 , 27 , 28 ]. Evidence from molecular epidemiological studies has proved low detoxification capacity resulting from abnormal expression of detoxicating enzyme genes were positively correlated with the levels of ADAs in the peripheral blood or cancerous tissues with HCC [ 27 , 28 ].…”

“…First, increasing amount of ADAs in tumor tissues usually indicates the low capacity of detoxicating enzymes [ 12 , 27 , 28 ]. Evidence from molecular epidemiological studies has proved low detoxification capacity resulting from abnormal expression of detoxicating enzyme genes were positively correlated with the levels of ADAs in the peripheral blood or cancerous tissues with HCC [ 27 , 28 ]. Furthermore, the downregulation of detoxicating enzyme cytochrome P450 (CYP450) 2W1 by microRNA-4651 significantly changed the efficiency of po-TACE treatment in improving HCC surviving [ 12 ].…”