Protective interventions to prevent aflatoxin-induced carcinogenesis in developing countries

Abstract

The public health impact of aflatoxin exposure is pervasive in economically developing countries; consequently, we need to design intervention strategies for prevention that are practicable for these high-risk populations. The adverse health consequences of aflatoxins in populations are quite varied, eliciting acute effects, such as rapid death, and chronic outcomes, such as hepatocellular carcinoma. Furthermore, a number of epidemiological studies describe a variety of general adverse health effects associated with aflatoxin, such as impaired growth in children. Thus, the magnitude of the problem is disseminated across the entire spectrum of age, gender, and health status in the population. The aflatoxins multiplicatively increase the risk of liver cancer in people chronically infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV), which illustrates the deleterious impact that even low toxin levels in the diet can pose for human health. Thus other aflatoxin interactions, which likely contribute to the disease burden, still remain to be identified. Therefore, many diverse and appropriate strategies for disease prevention are needed to decrease the incidence of aflatoxin carcinogenesis in developing countries.