The recent emergence of ciguatera in the eastern Atlantic, particularly in the Canary Islands (Spain) and Madeira (Portugal) prompted the development and implementation of liquid chromatography tandem-mass spectrometry (LC/MS-MS) methods for the detection of ciguatoxins in fish. The complexity of fish tissue matrices, low concentrations of ciguatoxins in hazardous fish, and the scarcity of ciguatoxin standards present challenging issues for successful implementation of routine ciguatoxin analysis. A laboratory reference material of Caribbean Ciguatoxin-1 (C-CTX1), which was previously confirmed in fish responsible for ciguatera outbreaks in the Canary Islands, was used to assess the toxin's stability under strongly acidic conditions and solvent systems commonly used in LC-MS/MS. It was observed that strongly acidic conditions caused the transformation of C-CTX1 to a C56 methoxy congener, C-CTX1-Me. C-CTX1 was structurally characterised by LC-MS/MS and fragmentation pathways are presented showing the same fragmentation pattern as C-CTX1-Me. These results suggest that the use of strongly acidic conditions during sample pretreatment for C-CTX analysis, might produce significant artefacts, and risks failing to detect the presence of C-CTX1.
Keywords: C-CTX1; Ciguatera Fish Poisoning; Ciguatoxins; Emerging toxins; LC-MS/MS.