Occurrence and associated health risks of pyrrolizidine alkaloids in supplements marketed in Ghana for improved sexual performance

ABSTRACT

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) are noted for their hepatotoxic, genotoxic, and carcinogenic effects in animals and humans following metabolic activation in the liver. In this study, herbal supplements sold in Ghana for sexual improvement were analysed for the presence of 64 PAs using LC-MS/MS analysis. Up to 17 different PAs were identified in 19 out of the 37 samples analysed. The sum of PAs in samples ranged from 5 to 3204 μg kg⁻¹. Since the PA content in the herbal medicinal preparations was generally lower than in honey samples, their presence was mainly attributed to cross-contamination. The observed levels would result in estimated daily intakes from 0.01 to 12 μg per day or 0.0002 to 0.2 μg kg⁻¹ bw day⁻¹ for a person weighing 70 kg. The margins of exposure ranged from 1200 to 1,400,000 with eight samples showing values below 10,000, thus indicating a health concern.

KEYWORDS:

• Herbal supplements
• pyrrolizidine alkaloids
• health risk
• aphrodisiacs
• Ghana

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Collaboration

This project is a collaboration between Wageningen Food Safety Research and the Department of Toxicology at Wageningen University and Research.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19393210.2023.2227961.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported financially by the Dutch organisation for internationalisation in education (Nuffic) as project number 61.390.30.270.