Talk:Orellanine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Medicine This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctor's mess.
Start This page has been rated as Start-Class on the quality assessment scale
Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance assessment scale


Chemicals WikiProject Orellanine is within the scope of WikiProject Chemicals, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of chemicals. To participate, help improve this article or visit the project page for details on the project.
Chemistry WikiProject This article is also supported by WikiProject Chemistry.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Low This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale.

Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

To-do list for Orellanine:
  • Expand article introduction
  • Write about orellanine's light sensitivity
  • Expand paragraph and explain how orellanine binds with alumunium ions
  • Research and write more about treatment
  • Explain the different types of orellanin, both the water soluble ones and the others
  • Expand infobox
  • Add information about the decomposition that occurs at 150 degrees celsius that causes orellanin to vaporize to oxygen leaving orellin behind.

[edit] LD50

I added LD50 data, and a tiny bit of primary research: according to the literature, the LD50 of Cortinarius Speciocissimus and Orellanus mushrooms is 3 and 2 (freeze-dried) g/kg in mice. This would correspond to 30 and 20 g/kg for fresh mushrooms: more than 1 kg for an adult human. Only few mushroom hunters would eat their catch in such amounts, from which I conclude that either humans are more sensitive than mice, or it often takes more than 2 weeks to kill. I don't have enough background in toxicology to judge this. Han-Kwang 23:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The LD50 of pure Orellanine in mice is LD50 = 12.5 mg/kg intraperitoneally and LD50 = 90 mg/kg orally. I don't see any data on how much a adult human can ingest, but by reading incidents about Cortinarius poisoning it is obviously significantly less than 2kg. Most poisonings occur when a cortinarius mushroom has been accidently intermixed with other mushrooms and then ingested.
The toxins latency time is extremely long regardless of the amount ingested it seems, in mice that were administered several times ld50 they still had a latency time > 2 days (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7195467&dopt=Citation). mic 01:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
How is there no antidote? What about antioxidants? -lysdexia 02:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
There is no direct antidote because the toxin, and how it works, is not completely understood. The anti-oxidant, like many other therapies, may help the body recover from the damage caused by the toxin but they don't counteract the poison. ([1] and [2])