Mycotoxins: The threat to food safety

Abstract

Food safety is the practices that ensure food does not cause harm whereas food safety hazard is any factor found in food that has potential threat or causes harm to the consumer, by causing injury or illness. Mycotoxins are significant food safety hazards representing a major threat to human and animal health. They are naturally occurring chemical hazards that can produce by certain genera of fungi, Asperigllus, Fusarium, and Penicillium as secondary metabolites. The major types of mycotoxins that have great effects on food safety and human health are aflatoxins, ochratoxins, patulin, fumonisins, zearalenone, and trichothecenes. Mycotoxins are very stable molecules and their occurrence in food can be pre-or postharvest stages. Prevention is an important strategy to control mycotoxins and should be achieved in pre-harvest and during storage stages, in both raw materials and processed food. Also, there are many methods for decontamination or detoxification which applied to food or feed contaminated with mycotoxins, without affecting the quality, the properties, or the safety of the food or feed. Continuous programs should be established to monitor the mycotoxins levels in food products during storage, distribution, and marketing to prevent any adverse effects on food safety and rather consumer health. Different methods were used for mycotoxins determination in food and feed such as TLC, HPLC, HPLC-MS, HPLC-MS/MS, and GC-MS. This review highlights chemistry, sources, occurrence, stability, prevention and control strategies, detection methods, and legislation of the most important mycotoxins with special reference to the international and Egyptian standards.

Discussion on emergency management of food safety from the perspective of foodborne diseases caused by mycotoxins

“…The pathogenic mechanism of aflatoxin is related to its high fat-soluble compound, which can be rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream from the exposed site through the gastrointestinal tract or respiratory tract. Its primary target organ is the liver, which typically produces acute cirrhosis and necrosis with edema and bleeding, but high concentrations of aflatoxin have also been found in the kidneys, lungs, heart, and brain (Marrez & Ayesh, 2022). In addition, some diseases such as malaria and AIDS may be due to the immunomodulatory effects of aflatoxin, because of immune regulation, the repeated infection of children leads to growth disorders or changes in intestinal integrity, making the host more vulnerable to foreign intestinal microorganisms (Nji et al, 2022;Matumba et al, 2016).It has also been suggested that aflatoxins may cause nutritional disorders by interfering with the absorption, protein synthesis, and metabolic enzyme activities of micronutrients (such as zinc, iron, and vitamins) (Benkerroum, 2020;Degen, 2017;Degen et al, 2017).…”

“…The most dangerous one is AFB1, which is classified as a human carcinogen (Group 1 carcinogen) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and can cause death at high doses (Misihairabgwi et al, 2019). Long-term exposure to AFB1 has strong toxic effects such as carcinogenesis, teratogenicity, mutagenicity, immunosuppression, and nutritional disorders (Sun et al, 2015;Theumer et al, 2018), which may cause primary jaundice, liver cancer, chronic hepatitis, and cirrhosis (Marrez & Ayesh, 2022;Schabo et al, 2021). AFB1 has strong acute and subacute toxicity in humans and animals after short exposure.…”

“…Aflatoxins can be destroyed by acid and base hydrolysis and the activity of oxidizing agents. Ozone is used to purify aflatoxins (Marrez & Ayesh, 2022;Jardon-Xicotencatl et al, 2015). Some chemicals, such as antifungal agents, anthocyanin, flavonoids, polyphenols, carotenoids, silymarin, etc., may also inhibit the growth of Aspergillus flavus (Shen et al, 2018;Zhou et al, 2015;Bovo et al, 2014;Mamo et al, 2020;Valencia-Quintana et al, 2020).…”

“…Certain mycotoxin can be used as antibiotics (e.g. penicillin) for the clinical treatment of diseases (Phillips & Zhang, 2019;Marrez & Ayesh, 2022). The Co-occurrence of multiple mycotoxin in food may affect their toxicological effects in humans and animals (Zhao et al, 2022;Flores-Flores et al, 2015).…”

Swift and Enhanced-Sensitive Analytical Method for Determination of Fumonisins FB1 And FB2 in Egyptian Oilseeds Using LC-MS/MS.

“…Mycotoxins, which are toxic compounds that are produced as secondary metabolites by several filamentous fungi, are recognized as food contaminants worldwide, causing significant economic losses in agriculture, and posing public health risks [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Fumonisins are compounds of mycotoxins that were produced by Fusarium fungi species, primarily Fusarium verticillioides, and F. proliferatum [9].…”