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Quality Control of Ayurvedic Medicines
Published in D. Suresh Kumar, Ayurveda in the New Millennium, 2020
V. Remya, Maggie Jo Alex, Alex Thomas
During growth on herbal substrates, some molds produce mycotoxins. Some of these substances like aflatoxins and ochratoxin A can be secondary metabolites, while others like fumonisins may be hydrophilic. Mycotoxins can be formed during cultivation or wild growth of the plant or during the storage of the harvested crude herb. Some ayurvedic herbs like licorice root may be contaminated by ochratoxin A. This toxin is produced by Aspergillus ochraceus, Penicillium verrucosum and several other species of Aspergillus and Penicillium. Ochratoxin A is nephrotoxic and carcinogenic (Anonymous 2015).
Antifungal Activity of Seaweeds and their Extracts
Published in Leonel Pereira, Therapeutic and Nutritional Uses of Algae, 2018
This fungus is known to produce the toxin ochratoxin A, one of the most abundant food-contaminating mycotoxins, and citrinin. It also produces the dihydroisocoumarin mellein. It is a filamentous fungus in nature and has characteristic biseriate conidiophores. Traditionally a soil fungus, it has now begun to adapt to varied ecological niches, like agricultural commodities, farmed animals, and marine species. In humans and animals, the consumption of this fungus produces chronic neurotoxic, immunosuppressive, genotoxic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic effects. Its airborne spores are one of the potential causes of asthma in children and lung diseases in humans. The pig and chicken populations in the farms are the most affected by this fungus and its mycotoxins (Bennet and Klich 2003).
Penicillium and Talaromyces
Published in Dongyou Liu, Laboratory Models for Foodborne Infections, 2017
Elena Bermúdez, Félix Núñez, Josué Delgado, Miguel A. Asensio
Another bioassay with bacteria is based on the motility inhibition of Proteus mirabilis and Azospirillum brasilense caused by some Penicillium toxins.57Escherichia coli is widely used in bioassays for toxicity and for genotoxic or mutagenic activity detection. Auffray and Boutibones60 evaluated the genotoxic activity of some mycotoxins produced by strains of Penicillium using Escherichia coli in the SOS spot test. When comparing the efficiency to detect toxigenic activity between SOS spot test and other tests, including mutagenicity to Salmonella typhimurium (Ames test), Bacillus subtilis (Rec assay), and in vivo carcinogenicity, similar results were obtained for ochratoxin A and rubratoxin B, but different results were observed for patulin, penicillic acid, kojic acid, citrinin, and PR toxin. Tests with microorganisms have also been used to evidence the toxicity of kojic acid,67 but mutagenicity could only be evidenced at high concentrations of the mycotoxin.
Fungal and mycotoxin occurrence, affecting factors, and prevention in herbal medicines: a review
Published in Toxin Reviews, 2022
Jingsheng Yu, Meihua Yang, Jianping Han, Xiaohui Pang
OTA is a mycotoxin mainly produced by Penicillium and Aspergillus (Varga et al. 1996, Nöbauer et al. 2017, Perrone and Susca 2017). Among ochratoxin group, OTA is the most abundant and toxic, and has been considered as Group IIB human carcinogen by IARC – International Agency for Research on Cancer (1993). OTA exerts toxic effects, including nephrotoxic, hepatotoxic, and immunosuppressive properties. It is also reported that OTA is implicated in Balkan Endemic Nephropathy (Abouzied et al. 2002). The toxicological study showed that ochratoxin could induce hepatocyte apoptosis through regulating Mir-122 and related target genes in liver (Zhu et al. 2016). Qi et al. (2014) observed that the kidney was damaged seriously when the rats were administrated with OTA for 13 weeks. However, OTA exerted limited effect on oxidative stress parameters, suggesting that the cell proliferation is the proposed mode of action for OTA-induced renal carcinogenicity. OTA exhibited thermal stability in the study performed by Boudra et al. (1995). The result showed the absence of complete thermal destruction of OTA during the heating process (100 to 250 °C). Therefore, the contamination of OTA in herbal medicines is difficult to eliminate.
Biosensors for the detection of mycotoxins
Published in Toxin Reviews, 2022
Akansha Shrivastava, Rakesh Kumar Sharma
Ochratoxin may present in three secondary metabolite forms (A, B, C); all of them are produced by Penicillium sp., Aspergillus ochraceus, and Aspergillus carbonarius. The presence of chlorine makes it unique in its structure and is one of the most commonly encountered mycotoxins. It is considered nephrotoxic, teratogenic, and immunotoxic and has been classified as a class 2B carcinogen by IARC (Murphy et al. 2006, De Ruyck et al. 2015). Ochratoxin causes DNA damage leading to mutagenesis and carcinogenesis. Among all, ochratoxin A is the main toxin in this group and profound in wheat, corn, cheese, meat products, and oats having a fungal infection and contaminated grains. Stove et al. investigated affected pigs and observed the enlarged and pale kidneys with damaged proximal tubules, renal fibrosis, sclerosis of glomeruli, and slightly undulating surface (Reddy and Bhoola 2010, Gupta 2011, Gupta et al. 2018). Cereals including barley, corn, rice, rye, sorghum, and wheat have been found to be contaminated with OTA being the maximum reported in sorghum (2106 µg/kg). However, the OTA limits were lower in cereal flour worldwide being maximum in rye, i.e. 68 µg/kg, but the incidences of contamination were higher as compared to cereal grains (Duarte et al. 2010).
The occurrence of ochratoxin A in human body fluids – review
Published in Toxin Reviews, 2021
Karolina Ropejko, Magdalena Twarużek
Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a naturally occurring food-borne mycotoxin produced by several fungi, including Aspergillus ochraceus, A. carbonarius, A. niger and Penicillium verrucosum (Korn et al.2011, Bui-Klimke et al.2015). OTA is neurotoxic, nephrotoxic, hepatotoxic, immunosuppressive and teratogenic in animals, though the evidence for these effects in humans is less conclusive (De Groene et al.1996, Petzinger & Ziegler 1999). OTA has been shown to inhibit the synthesis of proteins, DNA and RNA in the isolated cells and to contribute to renal toxicity by inhibiting various enzyme activities in the kidney (Bellver Soto et al.2016). Its presence in human body fluids, i.e. milk, urine, and blood suggest that it can gain systemic access to tissues but the principle target organ appears to be a renal system. It has been demonstrated that people suffering from Balkan endemic nephropathy and urinary tract diseases have higher circulating levels of OTA in their blood than healthy people, though the relationship may not be casual (Özçelik et al.2001, Scott 2005). The presence of OTA in human blood is also associated with a number of urinary tract diseases.