In Vitro Bioaccessibility, Cytotoxicity Against Liver Cells and Degradation Modeling Aflatoxin B₁ in Bread by Cold Atmospheric Pressure Plasma

This study aimed to investigate the aflatoxin B₁ (AFB₁) degradation as a result of using cold plasma by dielectric barrier discharge method at atmospheric pressure with gases (air, nitrogen, argon, and nitrogen + argon) at different times (0, 5, 15, 25, and 35 min) and also to model AFB₁ inactivation, cytotoxicity against human hepatocellular carcinoma cells (Hep-G₂), and AFB₁ bioaccessibility in simulated gastrointestinal conditions. The plasma gas flow rate was set to 10 L/min, and the length of the plasma jet was set to about 3 cm. AFB₁ was measured in inoculated bread samples by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and rapid molecular detection of Aspergillus flavus (A. flavus) based on the aflatoxin biosynthesis polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was done. The results showed that by increasing the plasma induction time to 25 min, the AFB₁ degradation increased significantly (p < 0.05) compared to the control sample. Applying different plasmas showed that air had the most effect and argon had the most minor impact on the AFB₁ degradation. The optimized PCR provided a very high specificity to identify and confirm the presence of A. flavus. AFB1 degradation kinetics modeling and model validation revealed that the Weibull model is the best model to describe aflatoxin degradation in inoculated bread. Evaluation of cytotoxicity against Hep-G₂ and bioaccessibility of AFB1 showed that bread samples treated with plasma had lower cytotoxicity and bioaccessibility compared to the control sample. Using air plasma in 25 min more effectively reduced the bioaccessibility and cytotoxicity against Hep-G₂ compared to other plasmas.