Research Publications (Food Safety)

A duplicate diet study was designed to explore the occurrence of 15 Fusarium mycotoxins in the 24 h-diet consumed by one volunteer as well as the levels of mycotoxins in his 24 h-collected urine. The employed methodology involved solvent extraction at high ionic strength followed by dispersive solid phase extraction and gas chromatography determination coupled to mass spectrometry in tandem. Satisfactory results in method performance were achieved.

Publication date: August 2015
, Volume 54
Author(s): Analice Kamala , Johana Ortiz , Martin Kimanya , Geert Haesaert , Silvana Donoso , Bendantuguka Tiisekwa , Bruno De Meulenaer

Publication date: 4 May 2015
, Volume 200
Author(s): Francesca Degola , Caterina Morcia , Franco Bisceglie , Francesca Mussi , Giorgio Tumino , Roberta Ghizzoni , Giorgio Pelosi , Valeria Terzi , Annamaria Buschini , Francesco Maria Restivo , Tiziana Lodi

Publication date: August 2015
, Volume 54
Author(s): Lin Zhao , Haitao Jin , Jing Lan , Ruiying Zhang , Hongbo Ren , Xiaobo Zhang , Guoping Yu

Fusarium armeniacum has been found as a saprophyte on natural grasses devoted to cattle feed in Argentina. This species has been reported as highly toxigenic due to the production of trichothecenes type A, but the information available about its toxigenic profile is incomplete. Thus, the aim of the present study was to determine the toxigenic ability of 50 F. armeniacum isolates recovered from natural grasses using a multitoxin method based on LC-MS/MS.

Direct analysis in real time (DART) ionisation coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) was used for the rapid quantitative analysis of T-2 toxin (T-2) and the related HT-2 toxin (HT-2), extracted from maize. Sample preparation procedures and instrument parameters were optimised to obtain sensitive and accurate determination of the toxins. The lowest calibration levels were 50 μg/kg for T-2 and 300 μg/kg for HT-2.

Aflatoxins are a class of mycotoxins that impair poultry health and performance. Some clays have the ability to adsorb aflatoxins. In our study, mineralogical composition of the tested clays was confirmed by powder X-ray diffraction and simultaneous thermal analysis and their properties like pH, electrical conductivity, exchangeable cations, cation exchange capacity and clay content were determined.

Contamination of crops used for food and feed production with Fusarium mycotoxins, such as deoxynivalenol (DON), raise important health and economic issues all along the food chain. Acute exposure to high DON concentrations can alter the intestinal barrier, while chronic exposure to lower doses may exert more subtle effects on signal transduction pathways, leading to disturbances in cellular homeostasis.

Publication date: 15 July 2015
, Volume 179
Author(s): Samir Mohammed Abd-Elghany , Khalid Ibrahim Sallam

Publication date: July 2015
, Volume 53
Author(s): Myra Evelyn Flores-Flores , Elena Lizarraga , Adela López de Cerain , Elena González-Peñas

Publication date: 1 July 2015
, Volume 178
Author(s): Arnau Vidal , Vicente Sanchis , Antonio J. Ramos , Sonia Marín

Publication date: July 2015
, Volume 53
Author(s): Casiane Salete Tibola , José Mauricio Cunha Fernandes , Eliana Maria Guarienti , Marcio Nicolau

Publication date: 1 July 2015
, Volume 178
Author(s): Yelko Rodríguez-Carrasco , Margherita Fattore , Stefania Albrizio , Houda Berrada , Jordi Mañes

Mycotoxins are low molecular weight fungal metabolites that pose a threat as toxic contaminants of food products, thereby necessitating their effective monitoring and control. Microplate ELISA can be used for this purpose, but this method is characteristically time consuming, with a duration extending to several hours. This report proposes a variant of the ELISA method for the detection and quantification of three mycotoxins, ochratoxin A, aflatoxin B1 and zearalenone, in the kinetic regime.

Publication date: 15 June 2015
, Volume 177
Author(s): Natalia Arroyo-Manzanares , José F. Huertas-Pérez , Laura Gámiz-Gracia , Ana M. García-Campaña

Publication date: February 2015
Food and Chemical Toxicology, Volume 76
Author(s): Laura-Ana Corcuera , Ariane Vettorazzi , Leire Arbillaga , Noemí Pérez , Ana Gloria Gil , Amaya Azqueta , Elena González-Peñas , Jose Antonio García-Jalón , Adela López de Cerain

This review highlights developments in the determination of mycotoxins over a period between mid-2013 and mid-2014. It continues in the format of the previous articles of this series, emphasising on analytical methods to determine aflatoxins, Alternaria toxins, ergot alkaloids, fumonisins, ochratoxins, patulin, trichothecenes and zearalenone.

Host plants excrete a glucosylation enzyme onto the plant surface that changes mycotoxins derived from fungal secondary metabolites to glucosylated products. Deoxynivalenol-3-glucoside (DON3G) is synthesized by grain uridine diphosphate-glucosyltransferase, and is found worldwide, although information on its toxicity is lacking. Here, we conducted growth tests and DNA microarray analysis to elucidate the characteristics of DON3G.

To evaluate the effects of the mycotoxins deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZEA) on pigs and the benefits of two mycotoxin mitigation strategies, gilts (n = 84, 9.1 ± 0.1 kg) were allotted to four treatments: CON (control); MT (4.8 mg/kg feed DON and 0.3 mg/kg feed ZEA); MT-YC (MT + 2 g/kg of yeast cell wall product); and MT-YF (MT + 2 g/kg of yeast fermentation product). After 42 days of feeding, pigs fed MT had reduced (p < 0.05) growth performance compared with pigs fed CON.

Publication date: June 2015
, Volume 52
Author(s): Gabriela Castillo , Katia Spinella , Alexandra Poturnayová , Maja Šnejdárková , Lucia Mosiello , Tibor Hianik

Publication date: 15 June 2015
, Volume 177
Author(s): Svenja Schloß , Ines Wedell , Matthias Koch , Sascha Rohn , Ronald Maul

Ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography using positive electrospray ionization and quadrupole orbital ion trap high-resolution mass spectrometry was evaluated for analyzing mycotoxins in finished cereal and nut products. Optimizing the orbital ion trap mass analyzer in full-scan mode using mycotoxin-fortified matrix extracts gave mass accuracies, δM, of <±2.0 ppm at 70 000 full width at half maximum (FWHM) mass resolution (RFWHM).

Publication date: June 2015
, Volume 52
Author(s): Jose Ignacio Ruiz de Galarreta , Ana Butrón , Amaia Ortiz-Barredo , Rosa Ana Malvar , Amando Ordás , Arsenio Landa , Pedro Revilla

Azole fungicides have been reported to be the most effective active substances in the control of Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) and in the reduction of the main mycotoxins that occur in cereal grain, such as deoxynivalenol (DON).