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. 2025 Feb;41(1):199-206.
doi: 10.1007/s12550-024-00577-8. Epub 2024 Dec 10.

Occurrence of mycotoxins in milk thistle: to be included in legislation or not?

Rastislav Boško  1 , Helena Pluháčková  2 , Jan Martiník  1   3 , Karolína Benešová  1 , Zdeněk Svoboda  1   4 , Sylvie Běláková  1 , Marek Pernica  5
Affiliations

Occurrence of mycotoxins in milk thistle: to be included in legislation or not?

Rastislav Boško et al. Mycotoxin Res. 2025 Feb.

Abstract

The silymarin complex extracted from milk thistle provides significant health benefits, particularly due to its antioxidant and hepatoprotective properties. However, plant substances can be contaminated by a number of fungi types and their secondary metabolites-mycotoxins. This work deals with the determination of aflatoxins and zearalenone and its metabolites in 39 different samples grown in 2020 and 2021. Analysis of mycotoxins was performed by UHPLC-MS/MS after immunoaffinity column AFLAPREP® and EASI-EXTRACT® ZEARALENONE clean-up. The presence of aflatoxins was not confirmed in the monitored samples, but 1/3 of the samples were contaminated with zearalenone in the range of 2.8-378.9 µg/kg. Metabolites of zearalenone such as α-zearalenol, α-zearalanol, and β-zearalanol were not detected in any of the samples. β-Zearalenol was found in two samples (2.6 µg/kg and 29.8 µg/kg).

Keywords: Aflatoxins; Food safety; Milk thistle; UHPLC-MS/MS; Zearalenone.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

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