Thread by @NaturesPoisons

It's ToxTuesday. I know we could use a little breather from *all this*, so let's take a look at a scary toxin, ORELLANINE, and admire another pretty @twsbi pen. (If you want to sponsor me, TWSBI, hit me up! 😅)

Orellanine is a mycotoxin, a toxin produced by fungi. Specifically, it is found in Cortinarius orellanus and Cortinarius rubellus, commonly known as "fools webcap" and "deadly webcap" mushrooms.
Pro tip: Don't eat things with "deadly" in their name.

Ingestion of these mushrooms is a horrible idea because orellanine is nephrotoxic - it destroys your kidneys. Absolutely ravages them. The exact mechanism of toxicity is unclear, but it could be due to interfering with redox reactions in the cell and increasing oxidative stress.

Symptoms of poisoning start a day or so after ingestion with nausea and vomiting. With the latency, people may not quickly associate it with the mushrooms, which is bad because you need help ASAP. Things are about to get worse, much worse.

This whole time, the kidneys are shutting down - increased thirst, no urinary output, and some pain. If left untreated, you're gonna die. The best-case scenario is you get a kidney transplant. Overall, the death rate is right around 50%, depending on the care you receive.

Now, people don't go out looking for Deadly Webcaps, they confuse them with edible, look-alikes. And that's the problem with mushroom foraging, there are so many dangerous look-alikes out there. As we toxicologists like to say, "All mushrooms are edible, some only once."

This reminds me of a woman I knew. We were grad students together (different groups) and later post-doc'd together. She's Russian, and foraged for mushrooms *in Russia*, but continued to do so in California despite the species being and looking totally different.

She never poisoned herself though, thankfully, because I liked her a whole lot. She was also convinced that you couldn't get drunk off beer or wine, only hard liquor like vodka - she was Russian, did I mention that?

But this leads to an important point. You may be an expert in mushroom foraging where you live, but go a few hundred miles away, and the mushroom landscape can change drastically. Your "known safe" mushrooms may not exist there, and a dangerous look-alike may, easily confusing.

A prime example is that of Nicholas Evans, the author of The Horse Whisperer, and his family. They were poisoned by orellanine in a tragic accident, with all 4 getting kidney transplants, even though some only ate a few bites. His story is here, READ IT: bmj.com/content/345/bm…

This quote haunts me: "I thought we were going to die. And there were times, in the dark, early hours of another sleepless night, when but for the thought of my children, I rather wanted to."

So that's the story of orellanine and the dangers of mushroom foraging. I'm not anti-foraging, so save your mean tweets, I'm just reiterating that you really need to be an expert - amateurs don't last long. And seriously @twsbi , send pens my way 😉.