mycotoxins

[MPPD]

had a mycotoxin urine test which came back positive. How accurate is this test and do these types of mycotoxins cause issues? I read that food we eat contains mycotoxins so how do I know if it is from food or environment? We built our house 20 years ago and have had no water damage and there are no signs of mold. The only illness I have is PD…

[park_bear]

The value of this kind of testing is questionable. At the very least we need to know what levels of mycotoxins were found. A mere "positive" is not good enough. More detail: cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrht...

"The laboratory reported "positive" concentrations of two mycotoxins: ochratoxin at 2.8 parts per billion (ppb) and tricothecenes at 0.4 ppb. The laboratory cutoff for "positive" was ≥2.0 ppb for ochratoxin and ≥0.2 ppb for tricothecenes. The interpretation accompanying the laboratory report said the results "revealed that you have an unusual level of that mycotoxin(s) present in your body.""

Based on this report this person's workplace was torn apart at great expense and nothing was found.

The known adverse effect of high levels of mycotoxin is kidney damage. Table one in this reference gives levels known to cause kidney damage: httas://mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/12/848

Urinary Biomarkers of Mycotoxin Induced Nephrotoxicity—Current Status and Expected Future Trends

It would seem that the ochratoxin level detected above was significant. Most mycotoxins require a concentration of 10 parts per million or more to cause damage. (that is 1,000 times the parts per billion level). The exceptions are aflatoxin which is damaging at the 30 parts per billion level and ochratoxin which is damaging at the .01 parts per billion level.

"OTA [ochratoxin] can be found in a wide variety of agricultural products, including cereals, grapes, oil seeds, wine, and barley. According to the WHO guidance, the PTWI (provisional tolerable weekly intake) of OTA is 112 ng/kg body weight (bw) [ 20 ]. OTA has been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as a group 2B human carcinogen [ 19, 21 , 22]. After biotransformation in the human body, more than 20 OTA derivatives have been described to date."

"The primary source of mycotoxin exposures for humans is dietary intake and, importantly, foods typically contain a versatile and hardly predictable mixture of mycotoxins rather than a sole mycotoxin contaminant [27,48,49]. There are three different ways for mixed mycotoxin contaminations to occur in food. Firstly, many fungal species are capable of producing a wide spectrum of different toxins, secondly food can be contaminated by more than one type of mycotoxin producer microfungi and thirdly diets are mixtures and could contain several different mycotoxin contaminants. Each of these routes can be harmful for the consumer. All of these mycotoxins are typically metabolized in the liver and are excreted via the kidneys, causing severe injuries and abnormalities in these organs [5,17,20,28,50]."