Anatomical distribution of diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) toxins in the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis

The aim of this work was to shed light on the anatomical distribution of diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) toxins in the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis and to determine any possible changes undergone during the depuration process. To this end, the distribution of two DSP toxins—okadaic acid and DTX2—and some of their derivatives were studied by means of HPLC/MS at different stages of the depuration process. Mussels were collected from mussel farms located in the Galician Rías and they were collected under three types of circumstances: (a) while ingesting toxic phytoplankton cells; (b) 1 week after the toxic cells had disappeared from the water; and (c) after ca. 2 months of depuration. Additionally, in case (b), the distribution among tissues was checked every week over a depuration period of 35 days in the laboratory. DSP toxins were only detected in non-visceral tissues when the extracts were concentrated 20-fold and, even in these cases, the concentrations found were very low. When the maximum possible contribution of non-visceral tissues was computed, taking into account the technique's detection limits and tissue weight, no relevant contribution to the toxin burden of non-visceral tissues was found at any stage of depuration, with the maximum possible contributions usually below 7%. The concentrated samples analysed showed that the actual contribution in all the cases studied was, in fact, less than 1% of the total toxin burden. These findings suggest that (1) when analytical methods are used to monitor DSP toxic mussels, non-visceral tissues should be assumed to be free of toxins in order to precisely compute the toxin concentration of the whole mass of edible tissues and (2) when studying the accumulation kinetics of DSP toxins, transference from the digestive gland to other tissues should not be taken into account, as the other tissues do not contain relevant amounts of DSP toxins.