Public Health Response to Puffer Fish (Tetrodotoxin) Poisoning from Mislabeled Product

Abstract

Tetrodotoxin is a neurotoxin that occurs in select species of the family Tetraodontidae (puffer fish). It causes paralysis and potentially death if ingested in sufficient quantities. In 2007, two individuals developed symptoms consistent with tetrodotoxin poisoning after ingesting home-cooked puffer fish purchased in Chicago. Both the Chicago retailer and the California supplier denied having sold or imported puffer fish but claimed the product was monkfish. However, genetic analysis and visual inspection determined that the ingested fish and others from the implicated lot retrieved from the supplier belonged to the family Tetraodontidae. Tetrodotoxin was detected at high levels in both remnants of the ingested meal and fish retrieved from the implicated lot. The investigation led to a voluntary recall of monkfish distributed by the supplier in three states and placement of the supplier on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Import Alert for species misbranding. This case of tetrodotoxin poisoning highlights the need for continued stringent regulation of puffer fish importation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, education of the public regarding the dangers of puffer fish consumption, and raising awareness among medical providers of the diagnosis and management of foodborne toxin ingestions and the need for reporting to public health agencies.

DNA Barcodes for Marine Biodiversity: Moving Fast Forward?

“…The extent of this phenomenon on the global market of fresh, smoked or dried fish products varies across continents [20,[49][50][51] and the possible explanations include genuine mislabeling due to morphological similarities between closely related species or fraudulent substitution of expensive species with cheaper variants. An extreme case of fish substitution had drastic consequences for public health, leading to food poisoning due to puffer fish toxin and the consequent recall of products [52]. With its power to reveal mislabeled products, DNA barcoding will have multiple implications from food safety and public health, to fisheries management (depletion of fish stocks) and conservation (protected species caught illegally).…”

DNA barcoding discriminates freshwater fishes from southeastern Nigeria and provides river system-level phylogeographic resolution within some species

“…In addition, DNA barcoding strategies are now being applied for other groups of organisms including plants (CBOL Plant Working Group 2009;Goa et al 2010), macroalgae (Saunders 2005), fungi (Seifert et al 2007;Stockinger et al 2010), protists (Chantangsi et al 2007), and bacteria (Sogin et al 2006). Furthermore, DNA barcoding has gained wide application in forensic analysis to investigate cases of illegal poaching (Eaton et al 2009), separation of species (Wilson-Wilde et al 2010), gut content analysis in ecological studies (Smith et al 2005;Berry et al 2007;Clare et al 2009), food product analysis and market substitution (Wong and Hanner 2008;Cohen et al 2009), and Asian medicine trade regulation (Peppin et al 2008). DNA barcoding has also been employed to validate the identity of biomaterial collections and cell lines (Lorenz et al 2005;Cooper et al 2007).…”

Optimization of extracting stachyose from Stachys floridana Schuttl. ex Benth by response surface methodology

“…And previous studies showed that chloroform may be used as defating agent in reflux defatting technique (Cohen et al 2009;Schober et al 2010). Here, dried powder of SFSEB (5.0 g) was placed into 50 mL of chloroform and refluxed for 2 h at 60°C for defatting.…”