Natural occurrence of citrinin in widely consumed traditional Chinese food red yeast rice, medicinal plants and their related products

Natural occurrence of citrinin in traditional Chinese food red yeast rice, medicinal plants and their related products has been investigated for the first time. Samples were extracted by methanol/water, cleaned-up with an immunoaffinity column (IAC) and quantified by HPLC–FLD. The mean recoveries, spiking with citrinin at levels ranging from 25 to 200 μg/kg, were 73.4–92.5%, and the coefficients of variations (CVs) were 1.4–7.9%. The limit of detection (LOD) was 0.8 μg/kg. Out of a total of 109 widely consumed samples analysed, citrinin was detected in 31 samples (28%) ranging from 16.6 to 5253 μg/kg, all of them derived from 59 red yeast rice and related products. None of the remaining 50 medicinal plants samples was found to contain citrinin. The positive samples were further confirmed using LC–ESI–MS/MS.