Identification of mycotoxins and glyphosate in human plasma

• Main Author: Markström, Ida
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Örebro universitet, Institutionen för naturvetenskap och teknik 2020
• Subjects: Chemical Sciences; Kemi
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-86110

Type one diabetes (T1D) and islet autoimmunity (IA) in people with a genetically susceptibility for the diseases can be triggered by environmental factors. It is earlier showed that the diet can be one of the environmental factors as it has been indicated that a cereal rich diet can increase the risk of developing IA. In this study, we investigated blood plasma samples from a study done by L. Hakolas on children that have genetic risk of developing T1D and IA, with a focus on dietary contaminants originating from cereals. Mycotoxins often found on cereals could be one of the environmental factors triggering the development of the diseases. To see if this could be the case a method based on a liquid chromatography coupled with a quadrupole-time of flight (LC-QTOF) was developed for the analysis of mycotoxins and glyphosate; MS/MS mode was used after that to confirm the identity of the compounds. For sample preparation, protein precipitation of the plasma samples was applied. The method was optimized by analyzing 5 mycotoxin standards and a list of suspected compounds that could be found in the screening to make sure the method could separate all the compounds. Test plasma samples was also analyzed to determine the optimal plasma volume (100 mL) for extraction and injection volume (15mL). For the data preprocessing, MZmine software was used and could tentatively identify some of the mycotoxins based on accurate mass acquisition. After comparing the signal against the background noise, Ergotaminine, FB1, Gly and HT-2 and NIV were identified. As quality control three replicates of a pooled sample were analysed, using both positive and negative ionization modes. From the pooled sample mean, standard deviation (STD) and relative standard deviation (RSD) were calculated showing some variation among the plasma sample for some mycotoxins e.g., Gly. The results presented in this report show that some mycotoxins do occur in the blood plasma and that the amounts of the mycotoxins varied. However, how these mycotoxins can affect the progress of T1D and IA is still unknown and requires further studies.