Risk Assessment of Aflatoxins in Maize-Groundnuts Complemen-tary Foods Consumed by Ghanaian Infants

Background: Complementary foods are given to infants when breast milk alone becomes insufficient in meeting their nutritional needs. The major objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of Aflatoxins (AFs) in Weanimix complementary foods purchased from shops in Accra (Ghana), and to estimate risk of liver cancer development in infants.  Methods: In total, 32 samples of Weanimix were purchased from shops in Accra, an urban centre and analyzed for AFs by Reverse-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography (RP-HPLC). Previously published data on levels of AFs in Weanimix prepared in rural households were also collected. The data was analyzed to estimate infants’ daily exposure to AFs as well as the risk of liver cancer development. Results: AFs levels of 18.8% of samples were above the maximum permitted limit of 10 µg/kg. The minimum and maximum levels of total AFs detected in all samples were 2.51 and 98.87 µg/kg, respectively with a mean value of 16.43 µg/kg. Exposure assessment showed that the minimum and maximum daily AFs exposures were 0.044 and 2.805 µg/kg bw/d, respectively for Weanimix from rural households; these rates for Weanimix purchased from urban shops were 0.014 and 0.55 µg/kg bw/d, respectively. The chances of liver cancer development would increase to 0.6 per year if infants were fed on Weanimix prepared in rural households with minimum AF level of 7.9 µg/kg. Conclusion: The infants fed on Weanimix prepared in rural households would be at a higher risk of AF exposure and liver cancer development than infants fed on Weanimix purchased from urban shops of Ghana.