Determination of zearalenone in traditional Chinese medicinal plants and related products by HPLC–FLD

Abstract

A HPLC-FLD method has been developed and validated for zearalenone (ZON) in 107 widely consumed Chinese medicinal herbs and related products collected from different regions of China. Samples were extracted with methanol/water (80 : 20, v/v), and the extracts were cleaned-up through immunoaffinity columns (IAC). ZON was quantified by HPLC with fluorescence detection. Recoveries from three different medicinal herbs spiked with ZON at levels ranging from 30 to 600 µg kg(-1) were from 80.8 to 98.3%. The limit of detection was 9.5 µg kg(-1), based on a signal-to-noise ratio of 3 : 1. Naturally occurring ZON was only found in coix seed medicinal herb (all nine samples), with levels ranging from 18.7 to 211.4 µg kg(-1). Positive results were confirmed by UV spectrum and LC-ESI-MS/MS. This is the first report of ZON contamination of a Chinese medicinal herb.

A Review of Current Methods for Analysis of Mycotoxins in Herbal Medicines

“…In addition to AFs, there have been reports of using IAC to purify other types of mycotoxins from herbal medicines, including OTA [ 114 ], ZEN [ 119 , 134 ], and citrinin (CIT) [ 117 ]. In addition, certain IACs that can be used to clean up multi-mycotoxins have been proposed for the purification of mycotoxins from herbal medicines, such as AflaOchra Test TM immunoaffinity column (VICAM, Milford, MA, USA) [ 86 , 87 , 127 ], and AflaZearal Test TM immunoaffinity column (VICAM, Milford, MA, USA) [ 89 ].…”

“…While less investigated compared to AF and OTA, the determination of some other mycotoxins in herbal medicine matrices using HPLC-FLD was proposed, including CIT [ 72 , 117 , 118 ], ZEN [ 119 ], and FBs [ 101 ].…”

QuEChERS extraction followed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for determination of deoxynivalenol and zearalenone in cereals

“…Immunoassays are an alternative or complementary technique to chromatography. A variety of immunoassay methods used for ZEN and DON detection have recently been described, including: enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (Gao et al, 2012;Wang, Luo, Cheng, Zheng, & Shen, 2011;Shi et al, 2013;Huang et al, 2014) immunochromatographic strip test (Shim, Kim, & Chung, 2009;Zhi et al, 2012;Duan, Chen, Xu, Fu, & Wang, 2015), immunosensors (Qing et al, 2011), time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay (Zhang et al, 2011) and fluorescence polarisation immunoassay (Chun, Choi, Chang, Choi, & Eremin, 2009) based on mAb.…”

Occurrence and analysis of mycotoxins in domestic Chinese herbal medicines

“…At present, HPLC/MS/MS method is often used to analyse ZEN levels in herbal medicines (Tan et al 2012;Zheng et al 2014a). Zhang et al (2012) detected and quantified ZEN in 107 CHM samples using an HPLC with DAD (HPLC-DAD) method. Compared with an HPLC-FLD-based approach, this method has decreased sensitivity but can provide the chromatogram of ZEN, and also obtain the spectrogram of ZEN in positive samples.…”