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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MEDICINE
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