Central Institute of the Bundeswehr Medical Service Munich, Ingolstädter Landstrasse 102, 85748 Garching, Germany.
Pharmaceutical Institute, Pharmaceutical Chemistry I, University of Bonn, An der Immenburg 4, 53121 Bonn, Germany.
Anal Chem. 2020 Apr 7;92(7):5387-5395. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.0c00087. Epub 2020 Mar 30.
Mycotoxins remain a global threat to human and animal health, especially in countries lacking effective measures to detect and control contaminated commodities. As the quantification of mycotoxins usually relies on complex and expensive techniques, the availability of suitable instrumentation is often a bottleneck in reliable mycotoxin detection. As part of our research toward strategies offering widespread access to mycotoxin analysis while cutting down on costs, we present a new extraction and quantification protocol combining materials originally designed for dried blood spot analysis with stable isotope dilution analysis. Its key benefits are that extraction of mycotoxins can be carried out at remote sites and by minimally trained personnel, while quantification will take place in specialized central laboratories simply connected by regular, paper-based mail. As a proof of concept, aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, and deoxynivalenol were extracted from cereal-based foodstuffs, fixed on paper cards for transport, and successfully quantified after re-extraction by stable isotope dilution LC-MS/MS analysis. Several materials (cellulose/polyethylene terephthalate/glass fiber, nontreated/chemically treated) as well as possible transport and storage conditions (temperature, humidity) were evaluated. The final myco-DES (dried extract spots) protocol allows quantification of mycotoxin levels currently recognized as safe (aflatoxin B: 2 μg/kg, ochratoxin A: 3 μg/kg, deoxynivalenol: 500 μg/kg) after a storage of up to 4 weeks under tropical climate conditions (40 °C, 75% relative humidity).
真菌毒素仍然是全球人类和动物健康的威胁，特别是在缺乏有效措施来检测和控制受污染商品的国家。由于真菌毒素的定量分析通常依赖于复杂且昂贵的技术，因此合适仪器的可用性通常是可靠的真菌毒素检测的瓶颈。作为我们研究策略的一部分，这些策略提供广泛获取真菌毒素分析的机会，同时降低成本，我们提出了一种新的提取和定量分析方案，该方案将最初设计用于干血斑分析的材料与稳定同位素稀释分析相结合。其主要优点是可以在偏远地区由训练有素的人员进行真菌毒素提取，而定量分析将在专门的中央实验室进行，只需通过常规的纸质邮件进行简单连接。作为概念验证，从谷物类食品中提取了黄曲霉毒素、赭曲霉毒素 A 和脱氧雪腐镰刀菌烯醇，并将其固定在纸质卡片上进行运输，然后通过稳定同位素稀释 LC-MS/MS 分析进行重新提取后成功进行了定量分析。评估了几种材料（纤维素/聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯/玻璃纤维、未经处理/经化学处理）以及可能的运输和储存条件（温度、湿度）。最终的真菌毒素 DES（干燥提取物斑点）方案允许在热带气候条件（40°C，75%相对湿度）下储存长达 4 周后，对目前被认为安全的真菌毒素水平进行定量分析（黄曲霉毒素 B：2 μg/kg，赭曲霉毒素 A：3 μg/kg，脱氧雪腐镰刀菌烯醇：500 μg/kg）。
