Survey of aflatoxins in non-alcoholic beers sold in Lorestan Province, Iran, by high-performance liquid chromatography

Background and Aflatoxins are of the most important groups of mycotoxins recognized to be teratogen, mutagen, and carcinogen. Aflatoxins have been detected in a number of foods including cereals and cereal products. Beers are often derived from malted cereal grain; most commonly malted barley and malted wheat. Contaminated cereals to aflatoxins results in malt and beers consumption with them. This study was carried out to evaluate the content of aflatoxins in 100 non-alcoholic beers collected randomly from supermarkets of Lorestan province, Iran, in first six-month of 2013. Aflatoxins were cleaned up with immune affinity column, separated by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and detected using florescence detector. No aflatoxin contamination was observed in any of the samples. According to the results, it seems there is no concern for aflatoxin contamination in beer. This is the first survey on aflatoxin contamination in non-alcoholic beers in Iran.