Risk assessment of deoxynivalenol in high-risk area of China by human biomonitoring using an improved high throughput UPLC-MS/MS method

Abstract

A risk assessment of deoxynivalenol (DON) was recently conducted for the residents in Henan province, China, where wheat as the staple food are highly consumed. A high-throughput sensitive UPLC-MS/MS method following 96-well μElution solid-phase extraction (SPE) were developed and validated for the determination of DON biomarkers in human urine. Isotope labelled internal standard, ¹³C-DON, was used for accurate quantification. Urinary samples collected from 151 healthy Chinese aged 2-78 years were processed with and without enzyme hydrolysis to determine total and free biomarkers, respectively. DON, and de-epoxy-deoxynivalenol (DOM-1) to a lesser extent, can be frequently detected in these samples both with and without enzyme hydrolysis. Free DOM-1 was detected at low level in human urine for the first time. Total DON was detected in all samples with a mean concentration at 47.6 ng mL^-1. The mean and median probable daily intakes (PDI) for the whole participants, estimated to be 1.61 μg/kg bw and 1.10 μg/kg bw, both exceeded the PMTDI (1 μg/kg bw/day), indicating a potential risk for the residents in this area, especially for children and adolescents.

Figure 1

Extracted ion chromatograms based on MRM transitions for DON, DOM-1 and their major analogs (5 ng mL⁻¹ of each compound).

Figure 2

Chromatograms of a naturally contaminated urine sample before (left) and after (right) β-glucuronidase hydrolysis (free DON, 20.4 ng mL⁻¹; free DOM-1, <LOQ; total DON, 116.2 ng mL⁻¹; total DOM-1, 6.4 ng mL⁻¹).

Figure 3

Scatterplot of urinary fDON (a) and urinary tDOM-1 (b) against urinary tDON, all in logarithmic scale. Levels below LOQ were set to half of the LOQ, and levels below LOD were set to half of the LOD.