Pyrrolizidine alkaloids in floral honeys of tropical Ghana: a health risk assessment

ABSTRACT

There is a vast amount of information about the nutritional and medicinal properties of honey as a result of its numerous benefits. However, honeys have been found to be contaminated with hepatotoxic and carcinogenic pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) on account of bees foraging on PA-containing plants. This study deals with the analysis of PAs in tropical honeys emanating from different agro-ecological zones of Ghana in order to assess its potential health risk. PAs of 48 honey samples were analysed using high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS/MS). The results show that a total of 85% of the honeys from various agro-ecological zones were PA positive including all honeys from supermarkets. The highest concentration of PAs was 2639 μg kg⁻¹, while the average PA concentration of the samples was 283 μg kg⁻¹. The study also found Chromolaena odorata pollens in majority of the honeys, thus indicating the plant as major source of PA contamination of honeys in the tropical regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs)
• Chromolaena odorata
• tropical honey
• Ghana
• HPLC-ESI-MS/MS
• food safety
• Africa
• agro-ecological zones
• health risk

Acknowledgements

Emmanuel Letsyo is most grateful to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the Government of Ghana for their generous financial support, Grant No. MoE-50015294.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Conflict of interest

We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the Government of Ghana [Grant No. MoE-50015294.];