The effects of T-2 toxin on the prevalence and development of Kashin-Beck disease in China: a meta-analysis and systematic review

Li D, Han J, Guo X, Qu C, Yu F, Wu X · Toxicology Research

The competing explanation to selenium: mycotoxin contamination of stored grain tracks with Kashin-Beck prevalence, in what the authors themselves call a slightly significant difference between endemic and non-endemic areas, pooled from a handful of studies — ten for the detection rate and three for contamination above 100 ng/g — with 72 articles reviewed in all, most of them the cell and animal work showing T-2 toxin damaging chondrocytes. Selenium deficiency and fungal contamination co-occur in the same poor, damp, isolated farming regions, so the two hypotheses are hard to separate epidemiologically.

Population

Studies of T-2 toxin detection in food and Kashin-Beck disease prevalence in China

Intervention

Exposure to the trichothecene mycotoxin T-2 from fungal grain contamination

Comparator

Lower or absent exposure

Limitations

Ecological data pooled across studies of varying quality, with exposure measured in food samples rather than in people. National Natural Science Foundation of China funded; no conflicts declared.