Talk:Amatoxin

Merging of Amatoxins with Alpha-amanitin

I don't think doing this would be good. Amatoxins is a group. Alpha-amanitin is a member of the amatoxins, not to mention the most lethal of them. merging this would be pointless and wouldnt make sense because amatoxins is a group while alpha-amanitin is a specific toxin. --Neur0X ^.talk 13:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm aware that alpha-amanitin is just one of several amatoxins - that's not the point at all. I think that alpha-amanitin would work perfectly well as a section within the larger amatoxin article, with other subsections for discussion of other amatoxins. I'll also point out that the majority of the article on alpha-amanitin is a description of the pathology of Amanita phalloides-type poisoning, a condition which is produced by mixed amatoxins, not by alpha-amanitin alone. Peter G Werner 21:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

That simply indicates that the page needs some modification, not that it needs to be merged, that has nothing to do with it.--Neur0X ^.talk 03:38, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

In addition to my first response, I've added some to the alpha-amanitin page, but just as well, the symptoms listed were primarily directive to that of alpha-amanitin symptoms. It did not include any of the effects on the destruction of cell membrane caused by phalloidin, and the effects are really only inclusive of alpha amanitin poisoning. I do think that the creation of a category such as Amatoxins that includes all amatoxins, such as the latter, phalloiding, and some other toxins.--Neur0X ^.talk 00:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

difference between amanitoxins and amatoxins meaning?

Hello folks, is there a difference (besides spelling) between amatoxin and amanitoxin? I ask so we can know what spelling to use in further article(s) and where to set any redirects.Thebestofall007 (talk) 22:06, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Confusing/ self-contradictory passages

There are a few parts that I find confusing here. The "Symptoms of exposure" section states both that amatoxins cannot be absorbed through the skin and that beta-amanitin can be absorbed through the skin. And concerning the mode of action as well, it's hard to tell from the article if all amatoxins inhibit RNA pol II, which is what it seems to state under Mechanism, but then under Physiological mode of action it seems to go into other (unrelated, or if related, how??) effects.. Some clarification would be nice here I think. Momordiq (talk) 21:33, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

While I cannot site a specific source I would deem credible, I have read elsewhere that absorption through the skin is not possible alone... but has an increased liklihood if using alcohol (possibly other chemicals as well) for sanititation and alcohol can be absorbed through the skin. Hopefully this clarification will help someone better versed than myself to make an appropriate edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1302:4391:E115:67E7:1BB7:A60A (talk) 03:34, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Article factually wrong

It says that Amatoxin is not denatured by heat but that is wrong because EVERY chemical compound is ultimately denatured by heat. Some just take much higher temperatures than others. That is unless it is to suggest Amatoxin would be stable at temperatures like those in the core of the sun then it is flat out incorrect to say heat cannot destroy it. Xanikk999 (talk) 20:24, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I edited the article to clarify this. Xanikk999 (talk) 20:27, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Treatment: Silybin/Silibinin

The Treatment section lists silybin in "Treatments showing no discernable value", but in the next paragraph says " Silibinin, a product found in milk thistle, is a potential antidote to amatoxin poisoning, although more data needs to be collected." The links show that silybin and silibinin are alternative names for the same thing, so this is a contradiction. Tslumley (talk) 06:45, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Studies

@KaiserTadd I have summarised the issues here so we can address them and work on improving the article rather than going back and forward editing.

This study, however, based this claim on data from a single patient case, and the authors acknowledge a degree of uncertainty about this hypothetical conclusion, noting that "the lethal dosage for humans probably depends on the health of the patient, his or her susceptibility or predisposition to liver injury, and ecotypic variation in the concentration of amatoxins in various locales. Our clinical and laboratory results showed that the amount taken by the patient remained below the hypothetical lethal dose. In our present study, the lethal dose was determined according to the data obtained from one patient, but these data are important for further investigations. Similar studies that include a greater number of patients may provide additional evidence for the quantification of potentially lethal doses of amatoxin"

Wikipedia is for summarising information from papers and reliable sources or presenting data from them. Quoting entire paragraphs should be avoided and in some cases may infringe upon copyrights. I've summarised this information and added it to the page as it is good to contextualise the study. Ideally it would be good to find some more case reports to add along with this one as more information will create a better picture. Let me know if you need help finding sources.

Every part of a mushrooming body in species that contain amatoxins has the toxin, and the amounts of these toxins in each of the respective parts, including the pilleus, volva, stipe, gills, and spores, are considerable.

'Considerable' doesn't really mean anything in this context when the concentrations are already presented. It is also too broad of a statement to apply it to every species that contains amatoxins. Some contain them in small concentrations and the different parts including spores have not been tested for many species it seems.

One study that examined Amanita phalloides var. alba showed that all parts of the mushrooming body contained the amatoxins alpha-amanitin, beta-amanitin, and gamma-amanitin and that the levels of these different compounds could vary somewhat in the pileus, gills, stipe, and volva.

This has already been summarised so doesn't need to be repeated in full but we can clarify this by changing the opening to 'In a 2013 study on the toxin concentration in Amanita phalloides all parts of the mushroom were found to contain amatoxins with the highest concentrations present in the gills and cap and the lowest levels in the spores and mycelium.'

There is some question as to the concentration of amatoxins in the fungal spores of such mushrooms. Although one laboratory analysis examined the relative amount of toxins in the different parts of mushrooms containing amatoxin and reported that the spores contain as little as 3% of the concentration of toxin of the main mushroom body, such a result may be misleading, as the quantities of alpha-amanitin in spores were reported by another similar study to be as high as 0.89mg/g, which is merely half of the concentration reported in the components with the highest. This discrepancy casts great doubt on the reliability of either result.

The paper cited doesn't give a figure of 3% and it's unclear why that information was on the wikipedia page to start with. Not sure if someone did the maths on it themselves based on the figures given but probably best to avoid including that I think. The result isn't misleading though - one paper you have cited is for Amanita phalloides and the other is for Amanita phalloides var. alba, the latter of which remarks on the difference between them and even calls it 'remarkable'.

In one study, which reported the significantly higher concentrations, the results were derived using only the spore prints from just six moderately sized mushrooms to determine the concentrations in each part, and so the authors had examined a miniscule mass of spores that may not have yielded such quantities of toxin so as to be reliably measurable with the methods used. The authors then had to grossly extrapolate the data to infer results about a much larger sample than they had available to analyze.

This is not an appropriate tone for wikipedia. We can include the details of how the spores were collected and the number of specimens used to contextualise the data but should avoid saying things like 'the authors then had to grossly extrapolate'. If you disagree with a study you should find other sources that disagree with it and cite those rather than injection personal criticism or conjecture.

The quantites of toxins measured in the separate components were not directly reported in this study, either; instead, they are referred to as merely as concentrations, which were calculated (in mg/g), an average relative to "one gram of dried mushroom". This confusion of "quantity" for "concentration" evidences further uncertainty as to the actual quantities that were measured, particularly in the spores, since the researchers did not use such a considerable sample size to obtain their data as they did with the other components. Neither were the spores explictly mentioned to be among the parts of the mushrooms they analyzed and so this aspect of the study is both poorly defined and weakly unsupported.

I think you have misunderstood the papers. When they say the quantities are given as a mean of 1g dried material in each sample they are saying that multiple 1g samples were tested and the concentrations that are presented are the average across these samples. It doesn't mean that the concentrations in the spores were somehow averaged against the 1g dry specimen. The materials and method section in the Amanita phalloides paper describes the process: spores prints were taken, the whole mushrooms were cut in half down the middle, weighed and dried. One half of the mushroom was used to calculate the total toxin volume in the dried mushroom with the concentration in the fresh mushroom being calculated based on the water loss, which was calculated based on the weight before and after drying. The other half of the mushroom was divided into cap, gill, stipe and volva sections which were ground individually. 1 gram was added to 15ml of the extraction medium. Hence, multiple 1 gram tests with the figure presented being the average for each part of the mushroom. The +/- could be included in the table but the variation seemed negligible enough for that one not to clutter it unnecessarily. It is common to use mg/g as a unit for measuring the concentration of toxins as it enables you to say how much toxin is found per gram of the substance. If they were to say 'we found 5mg' without specifying in what volume of material then that would not be as useful. As we know the weight of each sample was 1 gram though we do know how much of each toxin was found. That it gives a concentration in the spores shows the spores were tested. We can presume that they probably did not collect 1 gram of spores per sample however and did scale up the figures but this does not render them meaningless and does not mean they are averaged against the rest of the mushroom in any way. Were you to collect a full gram of spores to test for each sample perhaps you could say the figures would be more accurate given the larger sample size but this would also be a very time consuming and unnecessary way of testing them.

Given that far greater quantites of fungal spores are continously emitted in sporing bodies than may be collected in single spore prints, and the extreme toxicity of amatoxin in humans, the concern for toxicity resulting from spores is a matter of concern and warrants further clarification and research. Considering the extreme toxicity of amatoxin in humans, there is a need for such work.

Yes mushrooms emit more spores than you will get with a quick spore print but this does not change the concentration in the spores or the relevance of the data. Statements like 'there is a need for such work.' are also best avoided on wikipedia unless saying that is in some way relevant to a source you cite. Perhaps a more useful thing would be to find some more papers that estimate the amount of spores produced by these mushrooms in order to contextualise the toxicity level of the spores and determine how practical it would be to actually consume a dangerous level of them.

Functionally speaking, the structures reported to contain the highest concentrations by such studies, the gills, are the same ones directly involved in the formation and release of spores. Moreover, such studies examined dried specimens only, extrapolating the data to predict the quantities in wet ones, while these dry concentrations have differed still across similar studies. Indeed, the only conclusion reached by the authors in one such study that looked to analyze these different parts was broadly that "eating such mushrooms" would be fatal

Again the reason for the difference in the other study is that they are testing a different variant of the mushroom. Both papers include many of the same authors and their methodology is the same so these are not in conflict but simply presenting data on a different mushroom variant. The gill sample would have included the spores though yes as some always remain on the gills but this does not mean the test of the gills and the spores are interchangeable. The fact that the gills were higher is because the gill sample included gill flesh and Amanita gills can be quite densely packed and fleshy so the bulk of the sample would still have been the gill tissue.

MycoMutant (talk) 22:33, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

References

@KaiserTadd Also note that best practice is the copy and paste the references to avoid creating multiple references for the same source as is seen here. MycoMutant (talk) 22:35, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is for summarising information from papers and reliable sources or presenting data from them. Quoting entire paragraphs should be avoided and in some cases may infringe upon copyrights. I've summarised this information and added it to the page as it is good to contextualise the study. Ideally it would be good to find some more case reports to add along with this one as more information will create a better picture. Let me know if you need help finding sources."

This information was already edited and amended by you, which I generally agreed with and have not really further edited, so I am not sure why you are bringing it up. There is some grammar that needs correcting, there, however. See 'hypothetical'.

"Considerable' doesn't really mean anything in this context when the concentrations are already presented. It is also too broad of a statement to apply it to every species that contains amatoxins. Some contain them in small concentrations and the different parts including spores have not been tested for many species it seems."

"Considerable" means just that; It means occurring in quantities that are non-negligible. Where the study being cited mentions these quantities only in terms of concentrations, and not in actual mass, and these values are in some cases just half of the concentration in the highest components, even beating some concentrations of other toxic components, then these concentrations, according to the study, are statistically significant, i.e. considerable as to their presence. You are mistaken about the meaning of the term. At no point in the study did they find the quantities to be negligible, so this term is both factual and true within the context of the cited research.

Where we are discussing a set of toxins that have such extreme toxicity in these mushrooms that ingestion can be fatal, it makes sense to call the proven presence of these compounds in each of the parts "considerable" for the purpose of describing research that has been done to analyze these components and report on them, especially when studies that have done so are yet few in number. The material I cited is not the only study that has shown this to be so, and I could provide an additional study. There are different types of these toxins present in varying amounts in each of the parts identified, which the evidence supports. There is truly no reason to say that it is not so, based upon the research that's been done, owing also to a broader mycological understanding that a fruiting mushroom body is but an reproductive extension of a larger fungal network in a substrate, for which the presence of such toxins is ubiquitous. It is a remark that describes the parts of a mushroom body as belonging to a localized extension of the fungus which show to be concentrated with these toxins.

I will add a qualifier to that statement to narrow the statement and say that limited evidence was found in one study, however the research provided there does provide a definitive case that supports the truth of this statement. I did not, however, explicitly claim that every species in existence did, so I did not really think this is necessary to preclude the liklihood that it is so. It's best to provide some information in this encyclopedia that is not drenched in the research studies it comes from, to make the material interesting, readable, and allow the reader to make inferences and questions about the material presented, while providing the source for the information.

"The paper cited doesn't give a figure of 3% and it's unclear why that information was on the wikipedia page to start with. Not sure if someone did the maths on it themselves based on the figures given but probably best to avoid including that I think. The result isn't misleading though - one paper you have cited is for Amanita phalloides and the other is for Amanita phalloides var. alba, the latter of which remarks on the difference between them and even calls it 'remarkable'."

I presumed this other information cited to be true in good faith, and it did seem to conform with the some parts of the results of the study I examined and cited, where the concentration of certain amatoxins in certain components appeared to be negigible. Someone may have done the math themselves at citing a 3% figure, and I saw nothing wrong with that, either, however, I do think that the word "reliability" should be changed to "certainty" because that is more definitely what is at question, where there is disagreement between some results.

Those species are so closely related that you are splitting hairs. They are, in fact, the same species: one is a specified subtype, which usually only serves to better define the locale in which they were collected. They are, thus, very closely related and sufficiently so to compare for this purpose.

Given that is information holds with the very nearly identifical study I cited, and that it presented a certain conclusion which is questionable, I found it to be both appropriate and relevant to include research that calls such findings into question and provides a better context for the claims of one work as opposed to another.

"This is not an appropriate tone for wikipedia. We can include the details of how the spores were collected and the number of specimens used to contextualise the data but should avoid saying things like 'the authors then had to grossly extrapolate'. If you disagree with a study you should find other sources that disagree with it and cite those rather than injection personal criticism or conjecture."

It is a fact that the authors of the study that I cited in discussion of the mention of the concentration of toxin in the spores did "grossly extrapolate the data". If you read the study, you will find that this is very much so because the mass they used to measure such concentrations was, indeed, a very small one, and such an extrapolation from a quantity of the spore sample that is reasonably likely to be in milligrams to a concentration provided in milligrams toxin/grams of the specific mushroom component—a 1000x extrapolation of the concentration—could not be said to be anything but a gross extrapolation.

That paragraph was on the basis of the huge discrepancy of the results in the different works being reported, the notice of this weakness in the study's methods, and a description of such methods as the apparent way to account for them. Those statements are all true. There are certain limitations to the methods and tools being used, and these statements make sense in the context of the disagreement between results and the broader discussion being described. So, no, the tone is not inappropriate, and if you do think so, you should take care to actual read the work thats cited there, particularly the section that describes their methods.

It is not personal criticism of the work, but a presentation of the shortcomings of the study, generally, as a way to account for conflicting, though entirely reputable works. It is the taking into consideration of the work in as much detail as possible. Since I authored this material to the page, it is right for me to describe it as much as possible.

"I think you have misunderstood the papers. When they say the quantities are given as a mean of 1g dried material in each sample they are saying that multiple 1g samples were tested and the concentrations that are presented are the average across these samples..."

Much to the contrary, I think you are mistaken concerning the part of the study that examined these spores. The study clearly did not have a gram of spores which they used to analyze for the presence of reporting the values. This is but a further continuation of the discussion on the matter that is being developed by such studies. That amount of spores is impossible to collect from only the spore prints of just six mushrooms. Even a generous estimation of the quantity they used is surely mere milligrams, and cannot be anywhere near to a gram by weight; enough to see that it is, indeed, a gross extrapolation. The other components are present in considerable size that they could use a sample mass equivalent to the size of the concentration scale they were reporting. Also, the spores are indeed omitted from the specific enumeration of the different parts of the mushroom they tested, which raises substantial doubt as to the consistency of their method when extending it to the spores, and consequently, the certainty of the results in this study. You should reread the methods they used, as there are obvious holes and this paragraph is a proper description of the weaknesses in the study.

"Yes mushrooms emit more spores than you will get with a quick spore print but this does not change the concentration in the spores or the relevance of the data. Statements like 'there is a need for such work.' are also best avoided on wikipedia unless saying that is in some way relevant to a source you cite. Perhaps a more useful thing would be to find some more papers that estimate the amount of spores produced by these mushrooms in order to contextualise the toxicity level of the spores and determine how practical it would be to actually consume a dangerous level of them."

As I show, it does affect the accuracy of the work in a significant way, and I found these statement to be entirely consistent with the purpose of the subject matter and the research provided. It is elsewhere included in this page that the inhalation of spores can cause severe respiratory distress and even death. That claim warrants citation, but given that concentrations of some types of these amatoxins in the spores were found by this research to be, again, comparable, i.e. considerable, to other components of the mushroom, I find this information to be not only entirely relevant, but immediately useful to support the information provided elsewhere in this entry, and this much is well defended by the figure cited, therein, and in the table above, which data seemed to be pulled from the same set. The acknowledgement that more research is needed to define the limits of the present understanding and work is not out of place, given a thorough review of such work, with a thoughtful, careful presentation of it, while reinforcing the nature of the extreme toxicity of these compounds in the human body, which is the most remarkble thing about them. More to the point, the quantity of spores that can be emitted from a fruiting body over a period of time is another aspect of mycology that provides another dimension to the discussion, especially where it concerns how fungus spreads and infects decaying matter, and the potential for such spores to contaminate materials they come into contact with. Indeed, this is how they spread and grow.

Additionally, the later inclusion of the general statement about the historical inclusion of acedotal accounts of poisoning in field guides from spores presents a set of circumstances for poisonings that is relevant to this topic and should not be excluded or ignored. When you consider the principle of stories summarized there, whereby some number of sporing bodies were introduced to a collection of other mushrooms that were later consumed and reported to cause illness, although the amatoxin containing mushrooms themselves may have been discarded, it is an important and unique aspect of poisoning that should not carelessly done away with. I agree that such a statement could use some citation, and some work should be done to see if such a source could be found, but that doesn't make it nonrelevant to the topic.

Including none of the information would not be helpful to anyone, since very limited data and study does exist in this regard. This study is apparently one of the first few to do so. Ultimately, it seems like you are just trying to remove it because did not closely examine the results to have authored the paragraphs as I did, and you might not agree with some of the information being presented, yourself. You removed a great amount of relevant information that was cited, otherwise, which I had to revise and restore. Your discussion is valuable, but I feel that you are being overly dismissive of the importance of the work and the information being holistically presented here. Wikipedia's purpose is to expand on knowledge, and there is an appropriate way to do that which is to acknowledge and comment on the limits of such information we have.

I will continue to work on this and identify the parts I say that could use citation, but I think you are entirely misreading the tone, the purpose, and the mean of the things I've authored on the basis of an incorrect understanding of these citations. You are neither evidencing a careful consideration of the work or the facts so provided.

I don't need your help finding any sources, as I have access to them myself through my university. Thank you, however, if there was one that I needed, I would consider asking you for it. KaiserTadd (talk) 21:50, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

The content pasted back in was still inappropriate and has been removed. I don't have any more time to spend on this and in the interest of avoiding a pointless edit war I have requested a conflict resolution.

The discussion on that can be found here:

Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Amatoxin MycoMutant (talk) 02:45, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

You began a thread here to discuss the issues you see with cited material you removed, but are not willing to put forth any response to the message I posted in reply. I would have appreciated it if you would have actually responded to the conversation in kind, as I took the time to do so. I consider you conceding all these points, since you raise the issue in the interest of discussing it, but make no further attempt to do so before creating a dispute. KaiserTadd (talk) 00:36, 19 August 2023 (UTC)