The popular edible mushroom Ganoderma lucidum (Reishi) has been widely used for the general promotion of health and longevity in Asian countries. The dried powder of Ganoderma lucidum was popular as a cancer chemotherapy agent in ancient China. The authors recently demonstrated that Ganoderma lucidum inhibits constitutively active transcription factors nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappaB) and AP-...

P eople have harvested mushrooms from the wild for thousands of years for food and medicines. Of the estimated 1.5 million species of fungi, about 10,000 produce the fruiting bodies we call mushrooms. While commercial harvesting of wild mushrooms continues today, most of the world’s supply comes from commercial mushroom growers. The Chinese first cultivated shiitake (Lentinula edodes) mushrooms...

INTRODUCTION Panaeolina foenisecii is one of the most common and widely distributed lawn mushrooms in Europe and North America, and frequently involved in accidental mushroom ingestion, mainly in children. Nevertheless, there is contradictory information regarding the toxicity profile of P. foenisecii in the literature. Objective of the study was to assess clinical effects with particular atten...

BACKGROUND/AIM Alpha- and beta-amanitins are the main toxins of the poisonous Amanita phalloides mushroom. Although there are many studies available concerning alpha-amanitin, there are limited data about beta-amanitin in the literature. Therefore, this study is aimed at comparing the toxic effects of alpha- and beta-amanitin on the MCF-7 cell line. MATERIALS AND METHODS The alpha- and beta-a...

Exposure to wild mushrooms can lead serious toxicity and death. It is accepted that patients who ingest potentially lethal typically develop signs after six hours. However, clinical manifestations of poisoning occur less than hours ingestion do not exclude the potential for life-threatening toxicity, especially when more one type mushroom has been eaten. Whereas there are any parameters help es...

Central venous catheters are a commonly used medical device which may sometimes cause complications. We present first case who had an asystolic cardiac arrest during insertion of a central venous catheter, needed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and was resuscitated successfully. A46-year lady presented to the emergency department due to mushroom poisoning. Acentral venous catheter was inse...

The major syndromes of mushroom poisoning can be divided by presentation timing: Early syndromes (symptom onset <6 hrs after ingestion) have little probability to cause organ damage. Epigastric pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea occur in most cases and treatment includes initial gastrointestinal decontamination with oral activated charcoal and fluid rehydration. In addition, an acute gastroint...

We present two cases of acute liver injury resulting from consumption of wild mushrooms. The first case was a male who developed acute hepatitis after ingestion of diverse mushrooms including Amanita species. His clinical course was favorable with complete recovery of liver function. The second case was a male who developed acute liver failure (ALF) after ingestion of Amanita bisporigera. He re...

A 73-year-old, previously healthy man presented with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dry mouth and febrile sensation 3 hours after eating boiled wild mushrooms. After admission, he showed progressive severe respiratory distress, pancytopenia, azotemia, hypotension, hypoxemia and consolidation of the entire left lung on chest radiography. With a preliminary diagnosis of necrotizing pneumonia, he und...