Survey of roasted street-vended nuts in Sierra Leone for toxic metabolites of fungal origin

Abstract

Consumption of mycotoxin contaminated foodstuffs is common in regions where foods are not adequately controlled and routinely monitored, and this could have adverse effects on the health of consumers. In this study, 100 samples of roasted nuts (50 cashew nuts and 50 peanuts) vended within two cities of Sierra Leone were analysed for mycotoxins and other microbial metabolites by a LC-MS/MS method. The peanut samples contained detectable levels of 17 microbial metabolites, including aflatoxins B, B, G and G and alternariol, while none of these metabolites were found in the cashew samples. Aflatoxins (max: 5,729 μg/kg; mean: 487.8 μg/kg) and alternariol (3 μg/kg) were found in 24% and 2% of the peanut samples, respectively. One-third of the aflatoxin-contaminated peanut samples contained aflatoxins at levels exceeding the total aflatoxin limit of 4 μg/kg set by the European Union. Aflatoxin contamination of Sierra Leonean peanuts is high and requires urgent intervention to reduce consequent exposure.

Dietary Risk Assessment and Consumer Awareness of Mycotoxins among Household Consumers of Cereals, Nuts and Legumes in North-Central Nigeria

“…So far, it is evident that rice and sorghum are less susceptible to fumonisins than maize. Fumonisins were not detected in peanut, which agrees with previous reports from Nigeria [ 14 ] and Sierra Leone [ 35 ] but contradicts the findings from Cameroon, where FB 1 was found in peanut, albeit at very low mean concentration of 5 µg/kg [ 21 ].…”

Microbiological safety of ready‐to‐eat foods in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A comprehensive 10‐year (2009 to 2018) review

“…In addition, ELISA kits are only readily available for the detection of single mycotoxins (for example, aflatoxin B 1 , total aflatoxin, and ochratoxin A in foods). This constitutes a major hurdle to food safety especially in most LMICs, where there is frequent co-occurrence of multiple mycotoxins in dietary staples and RTE ingredients (Abia et al, 2017;Oyedele et al, 2017;Sombie et al, 2018;Warth et al, 2012 sensitive LC/MS-MS) are applied to give a more precise result and accurately quantify the concentration levels of multiple mycotoxins in several foods (Berthiller et al, 2018;Malachova, Sulyok, Beltran, Berthiller, & Krska, 2014). The application of these high-end techniques represents the gold standards for detection of multiple mycotoxins in food.…”

“…Of particular importance are AFs, FUM, and DON, which appear to occur more frequently at high levels in raw grains. Typical examples are the very high levels of AFs in groundnuts from Nigeria (max: 2,076 g/kg) and Sierra Leone (max: 5,729 g/kg) (Oyedele et al, 2017;Sombie et al, 2018), and in maize from Tanzania (max: 1,081 g/kg) and Somalia (max: 1,407 g/kg) (Kamala et al, 2015;Probst, Bandyopadhyay, & Cotty, 2014). To worsen the scenario, several mycotoxins often co-occur in RTE ingredients from LMICs.…”

“…Obviously, massive contamination levels in this group of foods widely consumed by all age groups have been reported in literature. Concentration ranges of the most potent carcinogenic mycotoxin, aflatoxins, have reached 2,820 and 3,328 μg/kg in peanut cake ( kulikuli ) and roasted peanuts from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, respectively (Ezekiel, Sulyok, Warth, Odebode, & Krska, ; Sombie et al., ). In addition, other mycotoxins have been reported to co‐occur with aflatoxins in RTEs from several countries.…”

Thinking Out of the Box: On the Ability of Zea mays L. to Biotrasform Aflatoxin B1 Into Its Modified Forms

“…In particular, a number of studies performed on food from rural areas in Africa and in other low-income countries listed AFM1, AFL, and other hydroxylated forms, among the co-occurring mycotoxins found in crops and traditional meals, where the fungal infection and the subsequent aflatoxin accumulation were high (Ezekiel et al, 2012a,b;Adetuniji et al, 2014;Chala et al, 2014;Matumba et al, 2015;Ojuri et al, 2018Ojuri et al, , 2019. AFM1 was also detected in roasted peanut from Sierra Leone (Sombie et al, 2018).…”