Health risk assessment of aflatoxin M1 in infant formula milk in IR Iran

Shirin Hooshfar; Roya Khosrokhavar; Hassan Yazdanpanah; Samira Eslamizad; Farzad Kobarfard; Firouzeh Nazari; Venetia Kokaraki; Manolis Kokkinakis; Marina Goumenou; Christina Tsitsimpikou; Aristides Tsatsakis

doi:10.1016/j.fct.2020.111455

Health risk assessment of aflatoxin M1 in infant formula milk in IR Iran

Food Chem Toxicol. 2020 Aug:142:111455. doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2020.111455. Epub 2020 May 28.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
² Food and Drug Laboratory Research Center, Food and Drug Administration, MOH&ME, Tehran, IR, Iran.
³ Food Safety Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran; Department of Toxicology and Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran. Electronic address: Iran.yazdanpanah@sbmu.ac.ir.
⁴ Food Safety Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran. Electronic address: s.eslami@sbmu.ac.ir.
⁵ Phytochemistry Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran; Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran.
⁶ Food and Drug Administration, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran.
⁷ Center of Toxicology Science & Research, Medical School, University of Crete, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
⁸ Laboratory of Toxicology, School of Medicine, University of Crete, Heraklion, 71003, Greece.
⁹ General Chemical State Laboratory of Greece, 11521, Athens, Greece.

PMID: 32474022
DOI: 10.1016/j.fct.2020.111455

Abstract

In this study, two accurate, precise, selective and sensitive methods were developed for determining aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) in infant formula milk using immunoaffinity column clean-up followed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection. The validated methods were used for determination of AFM1 in 29 samples of 6 different infant formula milk brands and the risk of AFM1 in infants aged zero to 6 months old was assessed using cancer risk, Margin of Exposure (MOE) and Hazard Index (HI). Only one sample (3.4%) was contaminated with AFM1. Although the results showed that MOE values for the mean and median exposure to AFM1 was <10,000 in infants, the additional cancer risk due to mean and median exposure to AFM1 in infant <6 months were 0.00010 and 0.00012 additional cases per year per 10⁵ individuals, respectively, which indicates no health concern. In addition, HI values for the mean and median exposure to AFM1 for infants were quite below one which indicates no health concern. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on risk assessment of AFM1 in infant formula milk consumed by Iranian infants <6 months old, presenting a low risk for the evaluated groups.

Keywords: AFM1; HPLC; IR Iran; Infant formula milks; Risk assessment; Spiked calibration curve.

MeSH terms

Aflatoxin M1 / analysis
Aflatoxin M1 / toxicity*
Dietary Exposure*
Food Contamination / analysis*
Humans
Infant
Infant Formula / analysis*
Infant, Newborn
Iran
Risk Assessment

Substances

Aflatoxin M1