Effectiveness of mineral adsorbents in reducing mycotoxins in chicken feed

The bioaccessibility of mycotoxin is an important factor that determines the possible toxicology risk in animals and human health. This term describes the fraction of a contaminant that is released from the food matrix during gastrointestinal digestion and is subsequently available for intestinal adsorption. In this work, the bioacessibility of the most relevant mycotoxins in chicken feed (AFB1, OTA, ZEA, DON, FB1) was investigated with INFOGEST method, to determine the mitigation capacity of asorbents. Five different adsorbents (A1, A2, A3, A4, A5) were added to the chicken feed, previously fortified with the five mentioned mycotoxins, in order to determine and the concentration of them in each phase (oral, gastrointestinal, and intestinal). The results showed that for mycotoxin AFB1, the most effective adsorbents with higher reduction percentages were A4 (95.3% ± 9.6 – 91.2% ± 7.9 – 49.2% ± 5.6) and A5 (95.8% ± 7.3 – 95.6% ± 8.7 – 82.0% ± 8.0) for oral, gastric and intestinal phases, respectively. For OTA the most effective adsorbents were A1 (3.1% ± 0.8 – 32.5% ± 4.5) and A2 (1.6% ± 0.4 – 31.4% ± 5.6) for the oral and gastric phases, respectively. The adsorbents that reduce DON in all the phases were A1, A2 and A3. For mycotoxin FB1, A2 was the most effective to reduce the mycotoxin concentration in all the three phases (82.1% ± 7.9 - 30.5% ± 6.1 – 72.2% ± 7.5, respectively) but the highest reduction rates were given by A3 and A4 in the oral phase. For the mycotoxin ZEN, A2 was the only adsorbent capable to reduce it in all the three phases, with the highest percentages (23.3 ± 2.5 – 23.0 ± 4.8 – 29.9 ± 4.1, respectively). In conclusion, all the mineral adsorbents tested showed a mitigation capacity in reducing mycotoxins in chicken feed, but to reduce all the mycotoxins tested in chicken feed, a mixture of A2 and A4 adsorbents would be appropriate.