engleski

Human mycotoxicoses

Although the most threatening features of mycotoxins are their carcinogenicity and mutagenicity, they may also cause diseases, called mycotoxicoses. Mycotoxicoses, that may have even fatal outcome, occur mostly as the consequence of the ingestion of contaminated food, but the other ways of exposure, such as dermal and respiratory, are also possible. Mycotoxicoses are more frequent in tropical zones where climatic conditions favor the moulds growth and mycotoxins production but due to the international trade of cereals, the possibility of human exposure to these toxins increases also in mild climatic zones. Human mycotoxicoses are rarely diagnosed if a single person or a small group of persons is affected because unfortunately medical doctors are not educated to recognize them. Out of about 400 known mycotoxins only a small number of them are known to cause mycotoxicoses in humans. The target organs of mycotoxins are most frequently liver and kidney where they are detoxified, but the lesions may be seen in all other organs. The history of mankind was sometimes severely affected by the epidemics of mycotoxicoses because several times they spread over the whole regions or several countries (such as ergotism in the Middle Ages, trichothecene mycotoxicoses that caused the depopulation of the whole regions of Russia and the several fatal mycotoxicoses that appeared after the separation of Pakistan from India). Such epidemics with very high percentage of fatalities are nowadays rare, but particularly in tropical zones they appear in small communities such as schools and factory canteens. Although it seemed that with the better control of food production epidemics of mycotoxicoses should disappear, recent severe epidemics in 21st century indicate that they will appear as long as the wars, famine and other catastrophes will be present.

Human mycotoxicoses

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