Every year, more than 100 people die from eating toxic mushrooms and thousands more get violently ill and require medical care. One class of mushrooms, called Amanitin, cause the most serious health issues.
Recently, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists developed a test that can detect mushroom poisons in minutes. This new test can identify the presence of a tiny amount of amanitin in the urine of someone who has eaten a mushroom containing amanitin. This test only needs a tiny mushroom sample, the size of a grain of rice, and returns results in about 10 minutes.
ARS microbiologist from the Foodborne Toxin Detection and Prevention Research Unit in Albany, California, Candace Bever, says “We developed the test primarily for mushrooms as food products. Serendipitously, it was sensitive enough to also detect the toxin in urine.”
Currently, if a person falls ill from amanitin poisoning and seeks medical care, there is no test that doctors can run to detect this type of poisoning. Being able to test a patient’s urine for the toxin would help doctors make an earlier diagnosis and possibly save lives.
This test could also help mushroom hunters, a pastime that has increased in popularity. While experts can identify deadly mushrooms just by looking at them, the same can’t be said for someone new to mushroom foraging. Many poisonous mushrooms look a lot like edible ones. Mushrooms from the same species can look like one another at various life stages, which makes identifying the toxic ones that much more difficult, especially to the untrained eye.
According to Bever, “This test can provide more information about a wild mushroom beyond physical appearance and characteristics and detect something we cannot even see--the presence of amanitins.” Being able to create an affordable test kit could help make mushroom foraging safer and even more popular.