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Topic 4: Can My Animals Adapt to Mycotoxins?
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When the mycotoxins are being ingested by the animal, actually first of all the intestinal epithelial cells are being exposed and after that actually have an absorption so the mycotoxins are moving from the intestine to the blood. Then actually to which extent this is happening depends a bit on the animal species and on the mycotoxins and then you have a distribution towards the different organs by the blood. So mainly liver and the kidneys are very important for this because there you have some bio transformation also processes which are very important for the excretion of the mycotoxins. The next step is bio transformation so it's mainly making the mycotoxins more water-soluble so that the liver for example plays a very important role and if the mycotoxins are more water-soluble this helps the excretion and the excretion is the last phase. So excretion of mycotoxins can happen either by kidneys, by the urine or by the feces. This can be the mycotoxin which is not absorbed but also some of the metabolites and it's also important to take into account that also it can be excreted by the milk or by eggs. So this is important from a food safety point of view. Yes we see actually major differences in the toxicokinetics of our different animal species. For example the absorption so how much of the mycotoxin is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract towards the bloodstream is for example for many mycotoxins much higher in pigs compared to poultry. Then also the next phase is metabolization is also different. For example for deoxynivalenol, you have a glucuronidation in pigs while you have a more efficient sulfatation in poultry. And last but not least you also have in ruminants for example the capacity to detoxify mycotoxin by the ruminal microbiota. However this is really limited to a couple of the mycotoxins but we see that in young animals, in very young calves, this detoxification capacity by the rumen is not yet fully developed. So there are major animal related factors influencing this but also disease conditions such as acute ruminal acidosis is negatively affecting this aspect. So within animal species, between animal species we can see major differences in these effects of mycotoxins. The effect of mycotoxins on animal health of course depends on which mycotoxin, which combination of mycotoxin and which dosage of mycotoxin. But if our animals are being exposed to higher levels of mycotoxins we can typically see this clinical mycotoxicosis where we have lesions. However in the most cases our animals are being exposed to low moderate levels of mycotoxins which we mostly don't see this clinical lesion but we still see major effects on animal performances and definitely gut health. Gut health is a major target of low moderate levels of mycotoxins affecting for example the gut integrity, affecting the villus length, so by that also affecting the absorption and digestion of nutrients. And last but not least we still see effects on the immune system. So we see immunosuppression, we see that mycotoxins at this lower dosage make the animal more susceptible for infectious diseases and in some cases even vaccine failure. The first thing you can do is of course feed analysis. Feed analysis is still the golden standard for mycotoxin analysis, however, you have to take into account that the problem with feed analysis is a heterogeneous distribution of mycotoxin in the feed sample. So you have to do a proper sample. So besides that you also have biomarkers. Biomarkers you can have biomarkers of effect and biomarkers of exposure. Biomarkers of effect you only actually have at the moment the sphinganine/sphingosine ratio for fumonisins exposure. Therefore we only have to look mainly forward in biomarkers of exposure and then we typically look to the mycotoxin or its metabolite in a biological substance for example blood bile or some others. However, you have to take into account that this analysis can only be performed by LC-MS or the more advanced technologies and at the moment we don't see really a good correlation between the concentration measures in the blood and the concentration measures in the feed. So we can indeed say yes my animal is being exposed however this correlation with the levels in the feed is not yet there at the moment.