The increasing public awareness of chemicals " that mimic or otherwise interfere with the activity of nat- ural honnones -so-called endocrine disrupters -has also led to greater study of mycotoxins with estrogenic poten- tial. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the topic of estrogenic mycotoxins and to discuss the state-of-the-art " in the analysis of these substances in cereals, with special ~ emphasis on zearalenone (ZON) as its most relevant rep- t resentative. Because the use of immunoaffinity columns (IAC) followed by high-performance liquid chromatogra- phy with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FLD) and im- munoassays are currently the most frequently used meth- ads for the determination of ZON and its metabolites, these techniques are discussed in more detail. Recent papers, which have revealed the great potential of HPLC-MS(MS) for the simultaneous detection and iden- tification of several estrogenic mycotoxins, are discussed. The perfonnances of the state-of-the-art methods are fi- nally compared by study of the results obtained in recent international intercomparison studies. On the one hand, these studies revealed the good performance of both chto- matographic and antibody-based methods. On the other hand, the need for better means of external quality assurance measures, especially the availability of certified ref- l: erence materials and certified standards, has clearly been demonstrated.
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