An apple a day keeps the doctor away?
Detecting patulin contamination in fruit products
A study by the European Food Safety Authority points to climate change and more humid conditions as a driver of growing food safety risks, such as mycotoxin production. Although many mycotoxins are associated with grains and cereals, one of the 400 known species is particularly abundant in pome fruits like apples and pears: patulin. Eurofins Abraxis has been leading the way in the detection of patulin in commonly affected foods.
Patulin, a metabolite of the fungus Penicillium expansum, is produced in fruits, grains and other foods when they become infected by the fungus. Fleshy fruits, or pome fruits, and thus their derivative food products are commonly affected, putting popular products like fruit juice, apple cider, applesauce and baby foods at high risk of patulin contamination. When ingested, this mycotoxin poses major health risks to humans and animals.
As a result, more than 100 countries have adopted strict regulatory guidelines aimed at controlling the presence of patulin in food and feed products, including the US, China, and EU countries. Gold Standard Diagnostics Horsham (formerly Eurofins Abraxis) quickly stepped up to help meet this new demand for patulin testing. In 2021, it became the first laboratory in the U.S. to develop a rapid detection method for this mycotoxin, which uses ELISA immunoassay technology to successfully detect the presence of patulin in food samples.
Additionally, Gold Standard Diagnostics Horsham is furthering its offering through the development of a lateral flow strip version of the test, to allow for even simpler qualitative or semi-quantitative results of smaller samples without the need for complex scientific equipment, another first for the industry.
The science behind
The Gold Standard Diagnostics Horsham ABRAXIS® Patulin ELISA Test Kit is suitable for the quantitative and/or qualitative detection.
ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) is a plate-based assay technique used to detect and quantify soluble substances. Antigens, in this case the patulin protein, are immobilised on a microtiter plate and bind with antibodies linked to a specific enzyme. By measuring the activity of this enzyme, it can subsequently be determined whether (and how many) antibodies have bound. The concentrations of the samples are determined by interpolation using the standard curve constructed with each reaction run.
The detection range of the Gold Standard Diagnostics Horsham ABRAXIS Patulin ELISA Test Kit is 7.0 ppb to 300 ppb in most fruit/juice matrices.
