World Mycotoxin Journal, 2020; 13 (1): 57-65 Wageningen Academic Publisher s ISSN 1875-0710 print, ISSN 1875-0796 online, DOI 10.3920/WMJ2019.2479 57 1. Introduction Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites produced by filamentous fungi, mainly consisting of the Aspergillus, Alternaria, Penicillium and Fusarium genera (Alshannaq and Yu, 2017; Kovac et al., 2018). The majority of humans are exposed to mycotoxins throughout their life, primarily by consumption of contaminated food, although exposure by skin contact or inhalation also occurs. Exposure to mycotoxins can cause serious adverse health effects like hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity and immunotoxicity. Some major mycotoxins, such are aflatoxins are carcinogenic to humans and have been classified by International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as Group 1 carcinogens (IARC, 2012), whereas mycotoxins like ochratoxin A (OTA) and sterigmatocystin (STE) are possibly carcinogenic to humans and classified as Group 2B carcinogens (IARC, 1976, 1993). Thus, monitoring human exposure to mycotoxins is of outmost importance. Various analytical approaches have been developed to assess the exposure to mycotoxins. As humans are frequently exposed to multiple mycotoxins simultaneously, multi-analyte approaches to assess the impact of mycotoxin exposure are the preferred choice (Al-Jaal et al., 2019a). Liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been effectively utilised to simultaneously measure multiple mycotoxins in food (Cao et al., 2018; De Santis et al., 2017; Malachová et al., 2014; Sulyok et al., 2006), feed (Dzuman et al., 2014) and biological fluids (Cao et al., 2013; Osteresch et al., 2017; Šarkanj et al., 2018; Slobodchikova and Vuckovic, 2018). While estimating mycotoxin exposure through assessment of contaminated food is common, direct monitoring of mycotoxins in biological fluids is crucial due to variable individual food consumption, mycotoxin bioaccumulation, inter-individual variability in mycotoxin adsorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (Escrivá et al., 2017). There have been several reports in recent years on mycotoxin contamination of food in Qatar (Abdulkadar et al., 2000, 2004; Al Jaal et al., 2019b; Al Jabir et al., 2019; Hammami et Determination of multiple mycotoxins in Qatari population serum samples by LC-MS/MS B.A. Al-Jaal 1# , A. Latiff 1# , S. Salama 1 , A. Barcaru 2,3 , P. Horvatovich 2 and M. Jaganjac 1* 1 Anti-Doping Lab Qatar, Sport city street, P.O. Box 27775, Doha, Qatar; 2 Department of Analytical Biochemistry, Groningen Research Institute of Pharmacy, University of Groningen, 9713 AV Groningen, the Netherlands; 3 Departments of Laboratory Medicine, University Medical Center Groningen, P.O. Box 30001, 9700 RB Groningen, the Netherlands; mjaganjac@adlqatar.qa; # these authors contributed equally Received: 29 May 2019/ Accepted: 22 November 2019 © 2020 Wageningen Academic Publishers RESEARCH ARTICLE Abstract Human exposure to mycotoxins is almost inevitable as mycotoxins are naturally occurring contaminants of large portion of food and feed. Depending on the type of mycotoxins, inter-individual mycotoxin adsorption, bioaccumulation, distribution, metabolism and excretion, can cause serious adverse health effects. Therefore, continuous biomonitoring studies of population exposure to mycotoxins are needed. Here we describe a multi- analyte approach for the detection and quantification of 20 mycotoxins in human serum using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray/tandem mass spectrometry operated in targeted multiple reaction monitoring mode. The validated method was used to assess occurrence of mycotoxins in serum samples of 46 residents of Qatar. Mycotoxins that were detected with high incidence were HT-2 toxin (13.0%), sterigmatocystin (10.9%) and 3-acetyldeoxynivalenol (6.5%). Also, co-exposure to several mycotoxins was noticed in the analysed samples. Our results show that strict food quality control is needed to remove mycotoxin contaminated food from the market in order to minimise human exposure to mycotoxins. Keywords: mycotoxins, Qatar, biomonitoring study, multi-analyte approach https://www.wageningenacademic.com/doi/pdf/10.3920/WMJ2019.2479 - Thursday, August 27, 2020 12:28:32 AM - Cornell University Library IP Address:132.174.252.179