Immunological Monitoring of Urinary Aflatoxins and Estimation of Liver Cancer Incidence in Koreans

Polyclonal antiserum R101 against aflatoxin $B_1$ ($AFB_1$) was raised in New Zealand white rabbits after injection of bovine serum albumin-$AFB_1$ conjugate. Competitive ELISA (enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay) demonstrated that antiserum R101 has the highest binding for $AFB_1$ (50% inhibition at 170 fmol) and aflatoxicol II (50% inhibition at 112 fmol). It also reacts with other aflatoxins such as $AFB_2$, $AFG_1$, $AFG_2$, and aflatoxin metabolites ($AFM_1$, $AFM_2$, $AFP_1$, and $AFQ_1$), but it does not cross-react with $AFG_2a$. Using this antiserum, aflatoxins were quantitated in 100 urine samples of undergraduate students at the College of Pharmacy, Sung Kyun Kwan University, Republic of Korea. By ELISA, $AFB_1$ and its metabolites were detected in human urine samples (N=100, male=89, female=11, ages=20~31 yrs) with a range of 1.4~200.6 ng/kg/day (mean$\pm$SD=$18.11{\pm}33.01\;ng\;AFB_1/kg/day$ in males, $3.82{\pm}2.65\;ng/kg/day$ in females). Assuming that urinary excretion is about 7.6% of $AFB_1$ intake (Groopman et al., 1992), we estimated that Koreans were daily exposed to a total dietary $AFB_1$ of $240.20{\pm}438.67\;ng/kg/day$ in males and $50.35{\pm}29.88\;ng/kg/day$ in females, respectively. When the human monitoring data was applied to a linear regression model of Y=21.67X-10.04 {Y=liver cancer incidence per 100,000, X=Log $AFB_1$ intake (ng/kg/day), r=0.99} developed from previously reported epidemiological data, calculated liver cancer incidences attributed to $AFB_1$ exposure were 41.56/100,000 in males and 26.84/100,000 in females. The incidences were similarly correlated with liver cancer mortality rates of 43.43/100,000 in males and 11.23/100,000 in females in Korea. These results suggest that aflatoxin exposure may be an important risk factor for the high incidence of liver cancer in Korea.