Mushroom Poisoning Outbreaks — China, 2019

Haijiao Li,Jing Zhou,Kaiping Zhang,Ke Wen,Yizhe Zhang,Chengye Sun,Shaofeng Jiang,Nan Lang,Yu Yin,Hongshun Zhang,Peibin Ma,Junjia Lu,Yuan Yuan,Yutao Zhang,Qian He

doi:10.46234/ccdcw2020.005

Abstract

What is already known about this topic? Mushroom poisoning is becoming one of the most serious food safety issues in China, which is responsible for nearly a half of all oral poisoning deaths. What is added by this report? In China, many mushrooms were previously “recorded” as poisonous. In this study, about 70 species obtained from mushroom poisoning incidents including several new records were confirmed accurately by morphological and molecular evidence in 2019, and spatial and temporal distribution characters of 13 lethal mushrooms were summarized systematically. What are the implications for public health practice? Precise and timely species identification is of pivotal importance in mushroom incidents. More efforts and cooperation are continued to be needed urgently for the governments, CDC staff, doctors and mycologists in future.

Highlights

Mushroom poisoning was the leading cause of foodborne disease outbreaks and outbreak-associated deaths in China
This study aimed to summarize and analyze the epidemiological characteristics of mushroom poisoning outbreaks from 2010 to 2020 in China
A foodborne disease outbreak is defined as an incident in which two or more cases involve a similar illness resulting from the consumption of a common food [11]

Summary

Introduction

Mushroom poisoning was the leading cause of foodborne disease outbreaks and outbreak-associated deaths in China. Mushroom poisoning is a cause of major mortality and morbidity throughout the world [3,4]. A total of 1,020 edible, 692 medicinal, and 480 poisonous species have been identified in China [6]. Most mushroom poisonings reported were accidental oral ingestion of poisonous mushrooms misidentified for edible species. Morphological characteristics and appearance of many edible species were like those of poisonous mushrooms. Poisonous mushrooms cause the most deaths in remote districts in southwest regions in China [7]. Mushroom poisonings often occur in other countries [8,9], but outbreaks were rarely reported [10]

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Results