Pleurocybella porrigens is a mushroom-forming fungus, which had been consumed as a traditional food in Japan. However, in 2004, 55 people got poisoned by eating the mushroom and 17 people among them died of acute encephalopathy. We have already reported the purification, characterization, and cDNA cloning of a lectin from the mushroom (PPL) which might have caused the poisoning. Here, we report...

In April 2013, a 48-year-old man and his wife picked wild mushrooms near Shing Mun Reservoir. After eating the cooked mushrooms, they developed symptoms resembling gastroenteritis and attended accident and emergency department (A&E) around 12 hours later. The husband was alert with normal blood test results at 18 hours following ingestion. Thirty hours later, his total bilirubin increased to 54...

BACKGROUND Clusters of sudden unexplained death (SUD) in Yunnan Province, China, have been linked to eating Trogia venenata mushrooms. We evaluated the toxic effect of this mushroom on mice. METHODS We prepared extracts of fresh T. venenata and Laccaria vinaceoavellanea mushrooms collected from the environs of a village that had SUD. We randomly allocated mice into treatment groups and admini...