High-Coverage UHPLC-MS/MS Analysis of 67 Mycotoxins in Plasma for Male Infertility Exposure Studies

作者：Ning Xiao, Lulu Wang, Jia-Sheng Wang, Jian Ji, Shaoming Jin, Jiadi Sun, Yongli Ye, Shenghui Mei, Yinzhi Zhang, Jin Cao, Xiulan Sun · 发表于：Toxics · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.3390/toxics12060395 · 被引用次数：13 · 研究领域：Mycotoxins in Agriculture and Food、Carcinogens and Genotoxicity Assessment、Insect and Pesticide Research

Mycotoxins are a class of exogenous metabolites that are major contributors to foodborne diseases and pose a potential threat to human health. However, little attention has been paid to trace mycotoxin co-exposure situations in vivo. To address this, we devised a novel analytical strategy, both highly sensitive and comprehensive, for quantifying 67 mycotoxins in human plasma samples. This method employs isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS) for approximately 40% of the analytes and utilizes internal standard quantification for the rest. The mycotoxins were classified into three categories according to their physicochemical properties, facilitating the optimization of extraction and detection parameters to improve analytical performance. The lowest limits of detection and quantitation were 0.001-0.5 μg/L and 0.002-1 μg/L, respectively, the intra-day precision ranged from 1.8% to 11.9% RSD, and the intra-day trueness ranged from 82.7-116.6% for all mycotoxins except Ecl, DH-LYS, PCA, and EnA (66.4-129.8%), showing good analytical performance of the method for biomonitoring. A total of 40 mycotoxins (including 24 emerging mycotoxins) were detected in 184 plasma samples (89 from infertile males and 95 from healthy males) using the proposed method, emphasizing the widespread exposure of humans to both traditional and emerging mycotoxins. The most frequently detected mycotoxins were ochratoxin A, ochratoxin B, enniatin B, and citrinin. The incidence of exposure to multiple myco...