Tetrodotoxin And Fugu Essay

Tetrodotoxin and Fugu Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a neurotoxin that is found in a variety of marine animals. In 1909 Dr. Yoshizumi Tahara discover tetrodotoxin in the ovaries of globefish, but Fugu was known to be toxic to humans for a long time (Bane, Lehane, Dikshit, O’Riordan, & Furey, 2014). The toxin is naturally found in nature and it known for its toxicity and fatalities for humans once it enters the body. Tetrodotoxin is water soluble meaning it can dissolve when it is mixed in with water and it is heat stable meaning that cooking the Fugu fish will not negate the toxin that is in Fugu (Bane et al., 2014). People who know about tetrodotoxin often compare the potency to being over a thousand times more toxic than cyanide with unknown antidote. Tetrodotoxin is a sodium channel blocker with binds to the sodium channels of the victim muscles and nerves blocking the sodium ions and effectively immobilizes the tissues (Bane et al., 2014).
There are about 20 different Fugu fish species that contain different concentrations of
There were three different occasion where people were poisoned with TTX, once in 1996, then in two in 2014. There might have been more, however, it was not reported to the CDC or the FDA. The first case in 1996 was in California where three people were poisoned. The amount of Fugu that they ate range from ¼ -1 ½ Oz and all three cases begin showing symptoms within 20 minutes of ingesting the contaminated fish (“Tetrodotoxin Poisoning”, 1996). The victims were sent to the local emergency department where the medical practitioner could support them until the toxin was resolve. The reason for this outbreak was because a chef brought the Fugu prepackaged, ready to eat product from Japan and did not declare the fish with customs. The chef shared the Fugu with other chefs in California where the outbreak occurs (“Tetrodotoxin Poisoning”,