Author(s)

Ilia Brondz, Eviatar Nevo, Solomon P. Wasser, Anton Brondz

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Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

Intoxication with Cortinarius orellanus Fr. is often lethal or, at the least, disabling for the victim. Orellanine is recognized as the prime toxic substance in this mushroom. Poisoning by other toxic mushrooms can be occasionally mistaken as poisoning by C. orellanus or vice versa. The C. orellanus toxins have a prolonged latent period after ingestion and onset in the appearance of symptoms. These properties of the toxin together with the chemo-, thermo- and photolability have made it difficult to develop a direct analytical method for diagnosing poisoning with orellanine, which in turn is needed to administer the correct medication. The aim of this study was to develop a direct analytical method for the detection of orellanine present in stomach content. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry with supersonic molecular beams (GC-MS with SMB) was used for the direct detection of orellanine in the stomach fluids of rats after they were fed with food containing C. orellanus. This method can be used as a platform for the future development of analytical procedures for the direct analytical detection of orellanine in humans intoxicated by ingestion of toxic mushrooms. The standard orellanine was isolated from C. orellanus following the procedure described by Prast et al. [1] and was used as an authentic comparison.

Cortinarius orellanus Fr.; Orellanine; GC-MS with SMB; Nephrotoxicity; Nephrotoxin.

Brondz, I. , Nevo, E. , Wasser, S. and Brondz, A. (2012) A direct gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method for the detection of orellanine present in stomach content (Part I). Journal of Biophysical Chemistry, 3, 29-34. doi: 10.4236/jbpc.2012.31003.