Determination of fumonisin B1 in plasma and urine by high-performance liquid chromatography

Fumonisin B1 (FB1), the major compound of the newly described fumonisin mycotoxins, has been shown to be the causative agent of the animal diseases leukoencephalomalacia in horses and pulmonary oedema in pigs. Whereas previous analytical methods have dealt with the determination of FB1 in feed and foodstuffs, this report for the first time details methods for FB1 determination in the physiological fluids, plasma and urine. The methods involve solid-phase anion-exchange clean-up, precolumn derivatisation with o-phthaldialdehyde and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. These methods were shown to be sensitive (detection limit around 50 ng ml-1), reproducible (relative standard deviation on six replicates less than 5%) and accurate (recoveries on spiked blank samples above 85%).