Mycotoxin analysis: An update

Abstract

Mycotoxin contamination of cereals and related products used for feed can cause intoxication, especially in farm animals. Therefore, efficient analytical tools for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of toxic fungal metabolites in feed are required. Current methods usually include an extraction step, a clean-up step to reduce or eliminate unwanted co-extracted matrix components and a separation step with suitably specific detection ability. Quantitative methods of analysis for most mycotoxins use immunoaffinity clean-up with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation in combination with UV and/or fluorescence detection. Screening of samples contaminated with mycotoxins is frequently performed by thin layer chromatography (TLC), which yields qualitative or semi-quantitative results. Nowadays, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) are often used for rapid screening. A number of promising methods, such as fluorescence polarization immunoassays, dipsticks, and even newer methods such as biosensors and non-invasive techniques based on infrared spectroscopy, have shown great potential for mycotoxin analysis. Currently, there is a strong trend towards the use of multi-mycotoxin methods for the simultaneous analysis of several of the important Fusarium mycotoxins, which is best achieved by LC-MS/MS (liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry). This review focuses on recent developments in the determination of mycotoxins with a special emphasis on LC-MS/MS and emerging rapid methods.

Multiplex flow-through immunoassay formats for screening of mycotoxins in a variety of food matrices

“…The values for the uncertainty regions for FB 1 , DON and ZEN were also computed and are as shown in Table 4. As can be seen the uncertainty range was broader for ZEN, FB 1 and DON in that order while OTA had the smallest uncertainty range. These differences could be attributed to the different properties of the anti-mycotoxin antibodies used to develop the multiplex assay.…”

“…The results revealed significant binding of OTA and AFB 1 to the C 18 particles. Although a significant amount of AFB 1 and OTA was lost with the custom made clean-up sorbent, this sample preparation procedure was preferred to other previously tested protocols.…”

“…Five times 100 L of PBS−0.05%Tween 20 was used to wash-off interfering substances. This was followed by the addition of 20 L of the respective mycotoxin−HRP conjugates (AFB 1 …”

“…Mycotoxins are natural, relatively small secondary metabolites, which are produced by moulds for example Aspergillus, Fusarium and Penicillium growing on agricultural commodities in the field or after harvest [1]. Humans as well as livestock are exposed to mycotoxins through the consumption of contaminated food and feed and through inhalation of airborne mycotoxins.…”

“…Mycotoxins are potentially harzardous to both humans and domestic animals as they cause a wide range of diseases [2]. Among the potentially toxic mycotoxins identified so far, aflatoxins, fumonisins, trichothecenes, patulin, ochratoxins, ergot alkaloids and zearalenone (ZEN) continue to receive most of the attention as they pose great threat to human and animal health [1]. Selecting a suitable method for mycotoxin analysis involves using a suitable sample preparation protocol and an efficient separation and detection method.…”