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Fungi and Water
Published in Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy, Food and Lifestyle in Health and Disease, 2022
Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy
Mushrooms are the type of fungi best used as foods and medicines since antiquity. However, until today, only about 10% of mushrooms among 140,000 estimated mushroom species have been exploited (15). They are rich in nutrients such as proteins, amino acids, vitamins (vitamin D2, B group), beta-glucans, enzymes, and minerals. Due to their special aroma and flavor, some wild mushrooms like matsutake and truffle are very costly. White button mushroom is the most consumed worldwide. Some other mushrooms such as reishi, shiitake, and maitake are used in traditional medicine. However, some wild mushrooms like death cap, deadly webcap, and destroying angel are deadly poisons. Mushrooms must be cooked before eating because heating destroys chitin cell membrane to liberate nutrients into the food.
Religion and Morals
Published in R.J. Morris, Cholera 1832, 1976
Swirling around these great concepts of God, Christ and prayer was a selection of that host of minor symbols relished by Protestant Britain, the stories of the Old and New Testaments. The ‘destroying angel’ appeared in many dissertations on cholera, and the actions of this aide of Almighty God were illustrated with a varied collection of pestilence texts from the Old Testament. ‘The leader of the host was employed in the land of Egypt’, said the Congregational Magazine; another visited the camp in the wilderness, and destroyed ‘the crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim’; fornication, the delight in war and neglect of the Lord were all causes of pestilence. The Reformed Presbyterians began their warnings with the tale of Sodom and Gommorrah, then delivered a volley of pestilence texts with breathtaking speed and economy of words, . . ., Lev.xxvi.25, When you are gathered together within your cities. I will send the pestilence among you, He is declared to smite with it (Num.xiv. 12), cause it to cleave to a people (Duet.xxviii.21) and to give over their life to its power (Ps.lxxviii 50). . .58
Amatoxin
Published in Dongyou Liu, Handbook of Foodborne Diseases, 2018
The genus Amanita comprises more than 1300 gilled mushroom species and varieties, some of which are deadly poisonous (e.g., Amanita abrupta, Amanita arocheae, Amanita bisporigera [eastern NA destroying angel], Amanita exitialis [Guangzhou destroying angel], Amanita magnivelaris, Amanita ocreata [western NA destroying angel], Amanita phalloides [Euro-Asian death cap], Amanita smithiana, Amanita subjunquillea [East Asian death cap], Amanita verna [fool's mushroom], and Amanita virosa [European destroying angel]) [3]. In particular, A. phalloides (Euro-Asian death cap) is associated with the most fatalities and often mistaken for edible paddy straw mushroom, whereas A. bisporigera (eastern NA destroying angel) may be mistaken for edible nontoxic Lepiota naucina. Morphologically, A. phalloides (Euro-Asian death cap) has a subovoid-convex eventually subplanar cap (pileus) of 5–16 cm across, which usually appears yellowish green, but sometimes appears olive to light brown (often paler toward the margins and after rain) with darker streaks radiating outward. The gills (lamellae) underneath the cap are crowded, free from the stem, white or whitish cream with slight yellow-greenish tinge in side view. The stem (stipe) is 5–15 cm long and 1–2 cm thick, white, with a membranous ring (annulus) about 1–1.5 cm below, and a base bulbous with a cup-like or saccate volva, which is often hidden by leaf litter and measures 2–3.5 cm × 1.6–5 cm (Figure 93.2a). In aged A. phalloides, the odor is distinctively repugnant (sickeningly sweet, rotten honey or carrion like).
N-acetylcysteine as a treatment for amatoxin poisoning: a systematic review
Published in Clinical Toxicology, 2020
Jiaming Liu, Yang Chen, Yanxia Gao, Joseph Harold Walline, Xin Lu, Shiyuan Yu, Lina Zhao, Zengzheng Ge, Yi Li
We conducted electronic searches of Pubmed, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (SinoMed, in Chinese) from their inception to August 31, 2019. Search terms included “acetylcysteine,” “N-acetylcysteine,” “N-acetyl-L-cysteine,” “NAC,” “amatoxins,” “amanitins,” “mycotoxins,” “alpha-amanitin,” “amanita,” “basidiomycota,” “agaricales,” “mushroom poisoning,” “mycotoxicosis,” “death cap,” “destroying angel,” and “hepatotoxic mushrooms.” Additionally, we also searched the reference lists in any included studies.