Abstract
Exposure to environmental contaminants might play an important role in neurodegenerative disease pathogenesis, such as Parkinson´s disease (PD) and Alzheimer´s disease (AD). For the first time in Spain, the plasmatic levels of 19 mycotoxins from patients diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease (44 PD and 24 AD) and from their healthy companions (25) from La Rioja region were analyzed. The studied mycotoxins were aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, G2 and M1, T-2 and HT-2, ochratoxins A (OTA) and B (OTB), zearalenone, sterigmatocystin (STER), nivalenol, deoxynivalenol, 3-acetyldeoxynivalenol, 15-acetyldeoxynivalenol, deepoxy-deoxynivalenol, neosolaniol, diacetoxyscirpenol and fusarenon-X. Samples were analyzed by LC-MS/MS before and after treatment with β-glucuronidase/arylsulfatase in order to detect potential metabolites. Only OTA, OTB and STER were detected in the samples. OTA was present before (77% of the samples) and after (89%) the enzymatic treatment, while OTB was only detectable before (13%). Statistically significant differences in OTA between healthy companions and patients were observed but the observed differences might seem more related to gender (OTA levels higher in men, p-value = 0.0014) than the disease itself. STER appeared only after enzymatic treatment (88%). Statistical analysis on STER, showed distributions always different between healthy controls and patients (patients’ group > controls, p-value < 0.0001). Surprisingly, STER levels weakly correlated positively with age in women (rho = 0.3384), while OTA correlation showed a decrease of levels with age especially in the men with PD (rho = −0.4643).
Highlights
Neurodegenerative diseases are one of the most frequent pathologies associated with aging, being Alzheimer’s disease (AD) the most common, and Parkinson’s disease (PD) the second most common
We present the results obtained in a first human biomonitoring (HBM) study on the analysis of 19 mycotoxins and metabolites in plasma samples from healthy and patient (AD and PD) volunteers in La
The results of the study suggest some differences between both control and patients in ochratoxin A (OTA) and STER levels
Summary
Neurodegenerative diseases are one of the most frequent pathologies associated with aging, being Alzheimer’s disease (AD) the most common, and Parkinson’s disease (PD) the second most common. AD is characterized pathologically by the presence of neurofibrillary tangles which contain hyperphosphorylated Tau, extracellular aggregates of amyloid β and severe neuronal loss in the brain [1]. PD is characterized pathologically by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta and the presence of. The mechanism underlying the cause in the majority of AD and PD cases remains unknown. Dominantly-inherited Alzheimer’s disease is relatively rare and in more than 90% of patients AD etiology is driven by a combination of genetic and environmental factors [3]. The precise mechanism of neurodegeneration in AD and PD is not clear, there is likely a complex etiology involving multiple environmental, age-related, genetic, epigenetic and inflammatory factors [5,6]
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