Chapter 10 Mushroom toxins

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses mushroom toxins. Mushroom poisonings can be divided into non-life-threatening, early onset poisonings, where symptoms begin within 6 h of eating a mushroom, and life-threatening, late-onset poisonings, where symptoms start over 6 h after ingestion. The toxins involved in the late-onset group are amanitins from amanita phalloides (death cap), amanita verna (destroying angel), amanita virosa and some galerina, lepiota and conocybe species, orellanine from cortinarius orellanus (deadly cortinarius), and gyromitrin from gyromitra esculenta (false morel). In addition to clinical symptoms, the diagnosis of mushroom poisoning may be based on the identification of spores present in materials originating from mushrooms. Especially in post-mortem forensic toxicology, the spore analysis in stomach contents has often been used. However, this chapter illustrates that radioimmunoassay (RIA) procedures and an increasing number of methods involving chromatographic or electrophoretic separation are also available at present. The treatise focuses on the analysis of the late-onset group toxins in human specimens, especially, on the amatoxins alpha- and beta-amanitin, which have been studied more extensively.