Metabolism of modified mycotoxins studied through in vitro and in vivo models: an overview.

Mycotoxins are toxic, secondary metabolites produced by fungi. They occur in a wide variety of food and feed commodities, and are of major public health concern because they are the most hazardous of all food and feed contaminants in terms of chronic toxicity. In the past decades, it has become clear that in mycotoxin-contaminated commodities, many structurally related compounds generated by plant metabolism, fungi or food processing coexist with their free mycotoxins, defined as modified mycotoxins. These modified xenobiotics might endanger animal and human health as they are possibly hydrolysed into their free toxins in the digestive tract of mammals, and may consequently contribute to an unexpected high toxicity. As modified toxins represent an emerging issue, it is not a surprise that for most toxicological tests data are scarce to non-existent. Therefore, there is a need to elucidate the disposition and kinetics of both free and modified mycotoxins in mammals to correctly interpret occurrence data and biomonitoring results. This review emphasizes the current knowledge on the metabolism of modified mycotoxins using in vitro and in vivo models.