comment on “quantitative evaluation of commercially available test kit for ciguatera in fish”评论u201c定量评估商用检测组件的鱼肉毒鱼u201d.pdfVIP

Food and Nutrition Sciences, 2012, 3, 1233-1237 1233 /10.4236/fns.2012.39162 Published Online September 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/fns) Comment on “Quantitative Evaluation of Commercially Available Test Kit for Ciguatera in Fish” Joanne S. M. Ebesu, Cara E. Campora ToxiTec, Honolulu, USA. Email: jebesu@ Received May 11th, 2012; revised August 10th, 2012; accepted August 17th, 2012 ABSTRACT This letter is in regards to the paper, “Quantitative evaluation of commercially available test kit for ciguatera in fish” [1]. We were compelled to respond because the entire premise of this paper is flawed, thus invalidating its stated conclu- sions. The data presented in the paper is derived from the opinions of four independent readers who evaluated identical Cigua-Check® test sticks to screen fish samples for ciguatoxin (CTX), the results of which were then compared with corresponding samples tested in a non-specific bioassay with questionable statistics (see Table 1 [1]). In addition to several factual errors presented in the paper, we have identified several issues with this study, such as insufficient detail and questionable data analyses, that make its interpretations unreliable. Keywords: Ciguatera; Cigua-Check®; Ciguatoxin; Neuroblastoma Cell Assay First, while the sodium channel-specific N2a neuroblas- Second, the N2a bioassay dose-response curve for Pa- toma cell bioassay used for comparative analysis in this cific Ciguatoxin-1 (P-CTX-1) in Figure 1 presented in study is a useful tool for detecting and measuring general the Bienfang, et al. [1] paper has many shortcomings. cytotoxicity as a result of exposure to CTXs and related Importantly, this figure does not show any error bars for toxins, it is not specific for CTXs. Like the Cigua-Check®