DETERMINATION OF AFLATOXINS IN TRADITIONAL MEDICINE PREPARATIONS
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Date
2003-04
Authors
ALPHONSE, OSISI IKENNA
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Abstract
Mycotoxins have been recognized as a substantial problem in foods. There are five
important mycotoxins namely aflatoxins (AF), ochratoxins (OTA), deoxynivalenol
(DON) and/or nivalenol (NIV), zearelenone (ZEA), and fumonisins (FM). Naturally
occuning aflatoxins have been found to be human carcinogens. OT A and FM are
possibly carcinogenic to humans. Of the several known aflatoxins exhibiting different
levels of toxicity, aflatoxins B
"
G" B2, and G2 are the most studied, with aflatoxin 8,
being the most toxic. Studies on aflatoxin contamination of natural foods have shown
that aflatoxins constitute a significant problem world wide, especially in tropical regions
of the world such as Southeast Asia and Africa. The present study is aimed at
detennining levels of aflatoxins B" B2, G" and 02 in traditional medicine preparations
from 3 Southeast Asian countries and I African country, and is the first known
comprehensive study conducted on the natural contamination of aflatoxins in traditional
medicine preparations. Levels of aflatoxins B
"
B2, G
"
and 02 in the traditional
medicine preparations were determined using reverse-phase high perfonnance liquid
chromatography (HPLC). The samples were first extracted with acetonitrile-water (9: I)
and cleaned-up on a multifunctional solid phase extraction ISOLUTE 1M MUL TIMODE
column (lMC). The samples were pre-colwnn derivatised using trifluoroacetic acid
(TF A) to enhance the fluorescent intensities ofBl and G, before their HPLC separation
using a mobile phase of acetonitrile-methanol-water (10:20:70). The main feature of the
.
chromatographic separation of these extracts is the presence of an intense potentially
interfering peak near the G 1 peak that were also found by other researchers on other
plant samples. However, confinnation of the p~esence/absence of the aflatoxins could
be made by comparing cbroritatograms of the underivatised and derivatised extracts.
The use of the IMe column is attractive as it is a single step SPE where endogeneous
components are trapped, while the atlatoxins were unretained and passed through the
column. Samples analysed include the popular after-birth medications "jamu", and
"makjun". AflatoXms were not detected in any of the 35 samples that were analysed.
Recoveries for B" G" B2, and G2 of 91.4, 92.9, 102.1 and 90.8 % respectively were
obtained when 10 ppb (B, and G,) and 20 ppb (B2 and G2) were spiked to 3 different
kinds of traditional medicines.
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Keywords
MEDICINE