Advancing Global Health Surveillance of Mycotoxin Exposures using Minimally Invasive Sampling Techniques: A State-of-the-Science Review

Abstract

Mycotoxins are a heterogeneous group of toxins produced by fungi that can grow in staple crops (e.g., maize, cereals), resulting in health risks due to widespread exposure from human consumption and inhalation. Dried blood spot (DBS), dried serum spot (DSS), and volumetric tip microsampling (VTS) assays were developed and validated for several important mycotoxins. This review summarizes studies that have developed these assays to monitor mycotoxin exposures in human biological samples and highlights future directions to facilitate minimally invasive sampling techniques as global public health tools. A systematic search of PubMed (MEDLINE), Embase (Elsevier), and CINAHL (EBSCO) was conducted. Key assay performance metrics were extracted to provide a critical review of the available methods. This search identified 11 published reports related to measuring mycotoxins (ochratoxins, aflatoxins, and fumonisins) using DBS/DSS and VTS assays. Multimycotoxin assays adapted for DBS/DSS and VTS have undergone sufficient laboratory validation for applications in large-scale population health and human biomonitoring studies. Future work should expand the number of mycotoxins that can be measured in multimycotoxin assays, continue to improve multimycotoxin assay sensitivities of several biomarkers with low detection rates, and validate multimycotoxin assays across diverse populations with varying exposure levels. Validated low-cost and ultrasensitive minimally invasive sampling methods should be deployed in human biomonitoring and public health surveillance studies to guide policy interventions to reduce inequities in global mycotoxin exposures.

Cord Blood Adductomics Reveals Oxidative Stress Exposure Pathways of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia

“…Recent studies of adductomics performed on neonatal dried blood spots [27,29] provide promise for the development of more practical approaches to tracking these exposure biomarkers over time in critically ill neonates. Utilizing dried blood spots has the advantage of being minimally invasive and more widely available as a source of peripheral blood measurement in neonates, with comparable stability in recent clinical studies [53][54][55][56][57]. Given that plasma and DBS samples are processed very differently, further validation is needed in order to integrate adduct levels from different blood sources, timepoints, and collection methods.…”

An Encyclopedic Compendium on Chemosensing Supramolecular Metal‐Organic Gels

“…Fumonisin B1 (FB1): FB1 is a mycotoxin that contaminates agricultural products, particularly grains like maize, consumption of FB1-contaminated food can lead to severe health consequences, including liver and kidney damage, immune system suppression, and an increased risk of cancer. [140,141] Rapid and sensitive toxin (FB1) sensing methods enable timely intervention to prevent the consumption of contaminated food products, safeguarding public health and reducing the economic impact of foodborne illnesses. [142] In the chain of nanoenzymes, another study presented by Yang and the group showed a novel visual peroxidase-mimicking aptasensor for the FB1 detection in corn meal, that demonstrated LOD of 2.7 pg/ mL.…”

High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry for Human Exposomics: Expanding Chemical Space Coverage

“…Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) or other silicone-based sorbent materials that are inert, nontoxic, and biocompatible play a crucial part in this . Sorbents vary in properties and behaviors; some samplers enable accurate (time-integrated) measurement of ambient pollutants for the sampling durations, whereas others are designed to mimic how exposures reach and get absorbed/adsorbed by human individuals or organisms. − One notable example is solid-phase microextraction (SPME), which consists of hair-thin fibers precoated with high-purity silicone (e.g., PDMS) for passive (and usually non-depletive) sampling of organic pollutants (either gas-phase or in aqueous solution) that has been increasingly applied in vivo as well. ,− Likewise, PDMS wristbands and new approaches such as Fresh Air wristbands and PDMS foam disks are likely to become more common in longitudinal NTA of personal, ambient, and indoor air contaminants for population exposure science, molecular epidemiology, and precision environmental health. − Meanwhile, novel, automated sample handling systems are being developed to link such minimal invasiveness (of microsampling) with scalability and throughput, as represented by dry blood spots, urine stripes, and volumetrically accurate microsampling (VAMS) collection devices. − …”

“… 99 − 103 Meanwhile, novel, automated sample handling systems are being developed to link such minimal invasiveness (of microsampling) with scalability and throughput, as represented by dry blood spots, 104 urine stripes, and volumetrically accurate microsampling (VAMS) collection devices. 105 − 107 …”