Occurrence of Aspergillus spp. and Aflatoxin B₁ in Malaysian Foods Used for Human Consumption

Abstract

Malaysian population widely consumes the cereal-based foods, oilseeds, nuts, and spices in their daily diet. Mycotoxigenic fungi are well known to invade food products under storage conditions and produce mycotoxins that have threat to human and animal health. Therefore, determining toxigenic fungi and aflatoxin B(1) (AFB1) in foods used for human consumption is of prime importance to develop suitable management strategies and to minimize risk. Ninety-five food products marketed in Penang, Malaysia were randomly collected from different supermarkets and were analyzed for presence of Aspergillus spp. by agar plate assay and AFB1 by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). A. flavus was the dominant fungi in all foods followed by A. niger. Fifty-five A. flavus strains were tested for their ability to produce aflatoxins on rice grain substrate. Thirty-six (65.4%) strains out of 55 produced AFB1 ranging from 1700 to 4400 μg/kg and 17 strains (31%) produced AFB2 ranging from 620 to 1670 μg/kg. Natural occurrence of AFB1 could be detected in 72.6% food products ranging from 0.54 to 15.33 μg/kg with a mean of 1.95 μg/kg. Maximum AFB1 levels were detected in peanut products ranging from 1.47 to 15.33 μg/kg. AFB1 levels detected in all food products were below the Malaysian permissible limits (<35 μg/kg). Aspergillus spp. and AFB1 was not detected in any cookies tested. Although this survey was not comprehensive, it provides valuable information on aflatoxin levels in foods marketed in Malaysia.

Dietary intake of aflatoxins in the adult Malaysian population – an assessment of risk

“…Evaluation of samples with aflatoxin levels above the LOD indicated that AFB1 generally was the dominating aflatoxin, with AFB2 being frequently present together but at a much lower concentration. This finding is similar with those reported in the European Union by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA 2007) and the study by Reddy and Farhana (2011) in Malaysia, which found A. flavus as the predominant fungi species that produces AFB1 in 65.4% of the strains.…”

Estimated Dietary Exposure to Mycotoxins after Taking into Account the Cooking of Staple Foods in Japan

“…Regarding mycotoxins, aflatoxin (AFL) contamination in rice and ochratoxin A (OTA) in pasta are thought to be the major problems [1,2,3,4]. AFL are a group of carcinogenic mycotoxins that cause liver cancer, with aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) exerting the strongest effect.…”

Screening of aflatoxin M1, a metabolite of aflatoxin B1 in human urine samples in Malaysia: A preliminary study

“…The occurrence of aflatoxin in the foodstuff is widely reported in the literatures. In Malaysia, aflatoxin is detected in cereals and grains (Reddy & Salleh, 2010;Soleimany, Jinap, Rahmani, & Khatib, 2011), nuts (Leong, Ismail, Latif, & Ahmad, 2010) and spices (Reddy et al, 2011). In fact, a study has shown that some of the contaminated foods had level above the permissible level adopted by the Malaysia Food Act 1983 and Malaysia Food Regulation 1985 (Sulaiman, Yee, Hamid, & Yatim, 2007).…”

“…Of these, mycotoxins are commonly found in a wide range of food commodities. Aflatoxin, one of the mycotoxins is produced by Aspergillus species of fungi mainly Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus paraciticus and Aspergillus nominus (Reddy, Farhana, & Salleh, 2011). The occurrence of aflatoxin in the foodstuff is widely reported in the literatures.…”