Surugatoxin - Background & Discovery

Background & Discovery

A food poisoning outbreak of 26 cases in the Ganyudo area of Suruga Bay, Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan in September 1965 was traced to ingestion of the toxin surugatoxin (SGTX), named for Suruga Bay. SGTX is contained in the mid-gut digestive gland of the Japanese ivory mollusk, Babylonia japonica, which is used as an ingredient in sushi and sashimi. The food-poisoning patients reported a variety of symptoms, including visual disorders, speech disorders, lazy eye amblyopia, pupil dilation mydriasis, abdominal distention, dry mouth, numbness of lips, constipation, and vomiting.

The toxicity shellfish from the Suruga Bay area varied with time – the toxicity was only present during July through September, when temperatures sometimes reached 25°C and it rapidly declined after 1978, making the availability of surugatoxin and the related substances neosurugatoxin and prosurugatoxin unavailable for research. Kosuge and colleagues found that these toxins are actually the metabolized products of a marine bacterium that belongs to the Coryneform group. Toxicity is a result of bioaccumulation.

Read more about this topic:  Surugatoxin

Famous quotes containing the words background and/or discovery:

    “I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
    —Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    “However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
    —Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)