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Biotech Science

Fish Poison Makes Hot Feel Cold and Vice Versa 169

Posted by kdawson from the rhymes-with-fugu dept.
SoyChemist writes "Ciguatoxin causes bizarre neurological symptoms including temperature reversal, a burning sensation, and an imaginary feeling of loose teeth. It is produced by algae and accumulates in the fatty flesh of tropical fish. While traveling to the tropics, a man from England ate some bad seafood that contained the unusual poison. His story, and the tale of some unfortunate sailors of an earlier age who suffered the same affliction, appeared in the current issue of Practical Neurology and was summarized on the Wired Science Blog. Both the Wired blog and the peer-reviewed journal neglected to mention that the potent neurotoxin has been made from scratch by organic chemists."
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Fish Poison Makes Hot Feel Cold and Vice Versa More

Fish Poison Makes Hot Feel Cold and Vice Versa

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  • Paradoxical Dysaesthesia (Score:5, Funny)

    by die444die ( 766464 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @04:14AM (#20972255)
    paradoxical dysaesthesia is hot.

  • Remember when... (Score:5, Informative)

    by The_Mystic_For_Real ( 766020 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @04:15AM (#20972261)
    Remember when submitters used to mark links that required payment?

    • Re:Remember when... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nullav ( 1053766 ) <mocNO@SPAMliamg.valluN> on Sunday October 14, 2007 @06:28AM (#20972721)
      How the hell was this modded off-topic? The first link in the summary makes you pay to read beyond a short summary.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by wlad ( 1171323 )
        Unless you're lucky, and you are in a university, and your university has an electronic subscription to that journal. Otherwise you end up paying crazily high amounts of money per article.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jez9999 ( 618189 )
          Yeah. That site is stupid. Why don't they just put up some ads? The readers from here will obviously go with the spirit of the site and not block the... oh, wait.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nbucking ( 872813 )
      I agree. Why isn't there a torrent site for academic papers? Lack of interest? Hopefully I spur some interest. Besides the point, why not just link us to wikipedia instead?

  • Cool! (Score:4, Funny)

    by sahar176 ( 1046492 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @04:37AM (#20972327)
    Errr I mean...Hot!

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @04:41AM (#20972343) Journal

    Ciguatoxin causes bizarre neurological symptoms including temperature reversal,

    Ah yes, good old XNOR poison... It's been a long time old friend.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by MichaelSmith ( 789609 )

      Ah yes, good old XNOR poison

      Wouldn't that be NOT poison, or is that something else?

      • Wouldn't that be NOT poison,

        Yes that's much closer to accurate, but you'll sound awfully stupid talking about "not poison".

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by I Like Pudding ( 323363 )

          Yes that's much closer to accurate, but you'll sound awfully stupid talking about "not poison".

          Yeah, and universities are going to be throwing honorary doctorates at you for talking about "XNOR poison". Then again, people tell me I see things only in black and white.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xPsi ( 851544 ) *
      A XNOR temperature poison would be one that made you and your friend feel both hot or both cold after eating the same fish. Sort of a subtle effect for a poison.
    • to call it a cure! ;)
    • I was wondering if some masochists produce this stuff internally.

  • Ciguatera is Common knowledge (Score:5, Informative)

    by waimate ( 147056 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @04:47AM (#20972363) Homepage
    C'mon, this is common knowledge among people who hang around the pacific. If you catch a large fish, don't eat the whole thing... eat some, and share around to dilute the risk. People have known this for over 30 years. Large fish have higher risk just because they are older.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:Ciguatera is Common knowledge (Score:5, Funny)

      by ianalis ( 833346 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @05:14AM (#20972457) Homepage
      Share it... for mutually assured destruction :)

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by BillX ( 307153 )
        And to avoid your friends thinking you're loony toony.

        Without sharing:
        "Oww, this fish is too piping hot to eat!" - You
        "Umm, are you going crazy? This dish is served cold." -Everyone Else

        With sharing:
        "Ack, this shit's too hot!" - You
        "Right on brother." - Everyone

    • Re:Ciguatera is Common knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @07:28AM (#20972925) Journal
      It's been known to Europeans for hundreds of years, and presumably to natives for much longer. (I had a very mild case in Belize a few years ago, from a barracuda.)

      Incidentally, for those wondering why the synthesis of this is newsworthy, check out the structures [qmul.ac.uk] of this and similar marine toxins. The synthesis of palytoxin, at the bottom, supposedly sent a number of grad students and postdocs to the hospital, as its intermediates are also insanely toxic.

      • Re:Ciguatera is Common knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Sethb ( 9355 ) <bokelman@outlook.com> on Sunday October 14, 2007 @09:16AM (#20973419)
        Yep, I was in Fiji in July, and they served some fish at our resort that was poisoned. I didn't eat any, my mom ate a small bit, but was fine. The resort owner and one other guest were quite ill for days, and their cat that ate the leftovers nearly died. Apparently there's no way to tell if the fish is infected, and cooking it doesn't destroy the toxin.
      • There's a pretty interesting article about synthesis of brevotoxin and similar structures in Science from a month or so ago. Volume 317 (31 August 2007), pp. 1189-1192, "Water near pH 7 facilitates a series of ring-opening reactions that yield a complex toxin produced in red tides, a reaction that has proven elusive in organic solvents." I'd urge chemically-minded /.ers to read it. There's also a more layman-oriented summary in Nature's News & Views section in the most recent issue.
      • It is only a matter of time before backpacking teenagers test it out for fun. "Dude! This match feels cold! And this ice cube feels hot...dooood..."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by m2943 ( 1140797 )
      Ah, so you got it from Agnes?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grcumb ( 781340 )

      If you catch a large fish, don't eat the whole thing... eat some, and share around to dilute the risk.

      Here in the South Pacific, we actually give a little to the nearest dog or cat, then watch them to see if they show any ill effects. Not kind, but better than the alternative, which is months of discomfort and real pain.

      People have known this for over 30 years.

      I think you mis-spelled '3000'. 8^)

      Large fish have higher risk just because they are older.

      Not exactly. Large fish are more risky because the

    • C'mon, this is common knowledge among people who hang around the pacific. If you catch a large fish, don't eat the whole thing... eat some, and share around to dilute the risk. People have known this for over 30 years. Large fish have higher risk just because they are older.

      Not just the pacific -- it's also common knowledge in the Caribbean. The rule of thumb there is that you don't eat shallow-water fish that's grown bigger than a dinner plate, as the bigger (and older) they get, the more the toxin has

  • About the journal this appeared in... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mdenham ( 747985 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @04:51AM (#20972375)
    ...would "Practical Neurology" be where you go if you're planning on having a drinking buddy do your brain surgery?

    • Re:About the journal this appeared in... (Score:5, Funny)

      by sadangel ( 702907 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @07:20AM (#20972891)
      You insensitive clod! My drinking buddy *is* a world famous neurosurgeon!

    • ...would "Practical Neurology" be where you go if you're planning on having a drinking buddy do your brain surgery?

      No, that would be Practical Neurosurgery. Neurosurgeons DO things. Neurologists THINK about doing things, if only they knew enough about the nervous system to actually Do Anything. But they don't. So they just tell you that you have some nasty problem, confusingly couched in a pseudo-Latin derivative. Then they bill you.

      Surgeons of all flavors live by the creed "Often wrong, never in do

  • Sir, if we invert the polarity of the brain receptors we can create a quantum power surge that will destroy the pirate ship. I just need these algae.

  • Where to order? (Score:5, Funny)

    by clarkkent09 ( 1104833 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @05:19AM (#20972471)
    The article failed to mention where can I get some of this poison? I need to cut down on my heating bill this winter.

    • Re:Where to order? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by artifex2004 ( 766107 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @06:34AM (#20972737) Journal

      The article failed to mention where can I get some of this poison? I need to cut down on my heating bill this winter.


      Ethanol is commonly known to give feelings of warmth [wikipedia.org], ; in fact, the movie A Time For Drunken Horses [imdb.com] is so named because the winter weather is so harsh that the only way the Iranian Kurds can get horses to work is to give them liquor.
      • But would it be better used for actually heating your home?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by evilviper ( 135110 )

        Ethanol is commonly known to give feelings of warmth

        With the pleasant trade-off of causing death by hypothermia instead...

      • Re:Where to order? (Score:5, Informative)

        by pla ( 258480 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @09:53AM (#20973647) Journal
        Ethanol is commonly known to give feelings of warmth

        Except, it doesn't just make you feel warm - It reduces your body's natural tendancy to hoarde blood in your core when the outside temperature drops, thus actually warming your skin and periphery.

        Of course, on the down side, with warmer skin you lose heat faster, and when your core temperature drops a few degrees, you go into hypothermia (and to make matters worse, with a few drinks in you, you might not notice until too late).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dasunt ( 249686 )

          Of course, on the down side, with warmer skin you lose heat faster, and when your core temperature drops a few degrees, you go into hypothermia (and to make matters worse, with a few drinks in you, you might not notice until too late).

          What's the cutoff for that?

          Let me explain: There's a range of air temperatures where my body won't suffer from hypothermia, presumably since it can regulate how much heat it produces and loses.

          When temperature gets too low, my body can't produce enough eat, and ergo,

          • If you are in a situation where there is a chance for hypothermia I'd say you shouldn't be getting yourself intoxicated no matter what.

    • Re:Where to order? (Score:5, Funny)

      by iknownuttin ( 1099999 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @06:51AM (#20972783)
      The article failed to mention where can I get some of this poison? I need to cut down on my heating bill this winter.

      This is nice and everything, but I want know what the hell is my wife taking that makes her cold even when I'm sweating bullets!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by The-Bus ( 138060 )
        It's pretty clear to me: Your wife is a fish.

      • You're lucky (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "what the hell is my wife taking that makes her cold even when I'm sweating bullets!"

        Don't worry, in a few more years, she'll be feeling hot all the time. And she'll yell at you a lot. For no reason you're aware of.

        But on the plus side, all your hair will fall out, and your children will consider you stupid. Which, all things considered, you are.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ignavus ( 213578 )
        "I want know what the hell is my wife taking that makes her cold even when I'm sweating bullets!"

        That's odd, she's not cold with me.
    • Sorry, but that's probably not going to happen. The oil lobbies are too powerful, and won't hesitate to to make sure this never sees the market. It's happened before.

      Have you ever heard of Synsepalum dulcificum, aka the Miracle berry? It contains a substance called Miraculin that alters the way humans taste. Basically, sour becomes sweet when you have some of it make contact with your tongue. Sounds like a great low calorie sugar substitute, right? I mean, sugar's not good for you, and this stuff w
      • LSD can make the color blue taste sweet and something sour sound like church bells but the "man" banned that too.

    • The article failed to mention where can I get some of this poison? I need to cut down on my heating bill this winter.

      Move to a tropical climate. Solves both problems.

    • I know this is a joke, but one of the final effects of hypothermia is a feeling of complete warmth that causes its victims to strip down in the bitter cold and freeze to death. It's called paradoxical undressing. Drinking also makes you feel warmer than you actually are; that's probably why so many homeless alcoholics freeze to death during a cold snap. Anyone drinking to stay warm probably shouldn't.
      • The body loses the ability towards the end to control the body's circulatory system and all of the blood that was being shunted to the core suddenly rushes back to the surface and limbs causing the heat flush. They once found a kid who died near Mount Washington in a storm who had opened up his sleeping bag before he died because of this.

  • Botete (Score:3, Interesting)

    by photomonkey ( 987563 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @05:23AM (#20972481)

    In the Sea of Cortés (Golfo de California), there is a fish known by locals as the 'botete'. It is a type of puffer fish. It causes exactly this kind of problem.

    Very interesting the way neurotoxins work...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ZwJGR ( 1014973 )
      If I remember correctly certain fungal toxins cause temperature inversion...
      I don't know about a feeling of loose teeth though.
      In general with fungals its some combination of nausea, dehydration, convulsions, vomiting, delirium, thirst, coma in some cases, etc. etc. and/or death if untreated, in 8-24 hours...

      Isn't nature great :)

      • I would suppose that the toxin either dehydrates soft tissue (gums) OR that a change in blood pressure can cause the mouth to throb.

    • Mmmmmm.... Fugu!!

  • French? (Score:3, Funny)

    by youthoftoday ( 975074 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @05:31AM (#20972517) Homepage Journal
    Fish poisson?

  • Nice curiosity, but what are the applications? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @06:07AM (#20972651)
    It would be great if we found a way to selectively "switch" some receptors. Like, when people suffer from burns to ease their pain. Or maybe in a deodorant that tells your skin it's freezing so you don't sweat in the first place.

    The former I'm not too sure about (whether it works or is even a good idea), the latter sounds silly to me, so what could we make out of that? I'm usually not someone asking for applications for a discovery to be "useful", but this is intriguing. Anyone got an idea what to do with that?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tim C ( 15259 )
      Or maybe in a deodorant that tells your skin it's freezing so you don't sweat in the first place.

      What, you don't have antiperspirants in your country already?
      • Sure, but wouldn't it be interesting to get a "cool and fresh" feeling through poison? :)

        • Re:Nice curiosity, but what are the applications? (Score:5, Funny)

          by Jesus_666 ( 702802 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @08:00AM (#20973051)
          Awesome! I can't wait to read this on the back of deodorant spray cans:

          PoisonCorp(TM) Cool&Fresh(TM) dedorant will give your skin a cool and fresh feeling and will prevent sweating for up to twenty years.

          Known possible side effects include prickling of the skin, headaches, numbness, diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration, hyperthermia, hallucinations, lung failure, kidney failure, cardiac arrest, an atypical form of Parkinson's disease, coma and death.

          Not to be taken orally. Keep out of the reach of small children.

          Warning: PoisonCorp(TM) Cool&Fresh(TM) dedorant is known to build up in the groundwater and in animals. Any object that has been in direct contact with PoisonCorp(TM) Cool&Fresh(TM) dedorant at any point as well as the remains of persons, cremated or not, who have used PoisonCorp(TM) Cool&Fresh(TM) dedorant at any point may not be disposed of normally and must be handed over to the Environmental Protection Agency as per the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act ("Superfund Act") of 1980.

      • What, you don't have antiperspirants in your country already?

        Most antiperspirants use either Aluminum Chloride, Aluminum Nitrate, or some other Aluminum-based salt to trick the body into not sweating. Some people, myself included, are allergic to Aluminmum, and applying a salt containing it to the skin will cause profuse sweating.

        Now... a deodorant stick that uses this kind of property to trick the body into thinking it's cold and not sweating in the first place could be called an antiperspirant, but the ki

      • Do they have antiperspirants without Alum yet? I don't like my armpits turning yellow. (I think it's the Alum that makes them turn yellow, anyhow...)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Abeydoun ( 1096003 )
      As a matter of fact, that's what methanol does. One of it's characteristics is to selectively stimulate the cool-feeling receptors of your skin while leaving practically everything else alone. And on the other hand, there's capsasin, everyone's favorite ingredient in salsa.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Abeydoun ( 1096003 )
        urgh... meant to say menthol, not methanol. Bah, guess that's what happens when you skip a night of sleep.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by alexo ( 9335 )

          urgh... meant to say menthol, not methanol. Bah, guess that's what happens when you skip a night of sleep.

          I guess the people that moderated it "informative" skipped a whole week.
      • Methanol can also invert light receptors - everything goes dark when you go blind after drinking it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BillX ( 307153 )
      Icy to dull the pain, hot to relax it away?
  • the potent neurotoxin has been made from scratch by organic chemists ...who are at this moment being transported to Guantanamo Bay for "re-education".

  • Loose teeth? Englishman? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dissolved ( 887190 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @06:25AM (#20972711)
    Given the state of our NHS and the mythical availability of dental treatment, I wouldn't put the blame for any feeling of loose teeth down to poison alone...
  • Someone must have patented a method for getting atoms to rearrange into clusters (hereinafter referred to as molecules) of a desired composition with test tubes and bunsen burners and stuff...

  • oh my god (Score:2, Funny)

    by rpillala ( 583965 )

    Don't give the Bush administration any more ideas.

  • US Coast Guard has stopped a shipment of fish fat from being delivered off the coast of Florida. The smugglers claimed to be mere fishermen, but when one of them was burned by a splash of water, authorities became suspicious.

  • LSD (Score:5, Funny)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @07:27AM (#20972921) Homepage Journal
    Can do this too. And cheaper.
    • Yeah but with LSD your teeth don't just feel loose, they jump out of your head and run around the room laughing at you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )
        Whereas if you mix the fish poison with LSD and those magic mushrooms Holland is banning?
        • Well, then you can tell us whether the snozzberries are warm or cold, as well as whether they taste like snozzberries.
  • "... summarized on the Wired Science Blog." or Weird Science Blog, going by the weird scientific articles being posted on there.
  • In soviet russia, unusual fish poison that makes you feel hot as cold and cold as hot makes you feel hot as hot and cold as cold.
  • ....Rectal Cranial Inversion. Sadly, most people already suffer from the latter without knowing.
  • Now that it's been synthesized, will this become the next recreational drug in countries where it's legal?

  • amusing? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by m2943 ( 1140797 ) on Sunday October 14, 2007 @09:12AM (#20973395)
    described the amusing case in the October issue of Practical Neurology

    Amusing?

    including temperature reversal, intense pruritus and increased nociception [...] improved over a period of 10 months

    This sounds very unpleasant. This might be amusing if it happened to Osama, but otherwise, this isn't something you'd wish on someone's dog.
  • and I tried to tell my mom!

    Poissons = Poison

  • What doctors do these folks go to? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xPsi ( 851544 ) * on Sunday October 14, 2007 @10:54AM (#20974031)
    I always enjoy reading stories like this where some interesting or subtle medical effect is at work. It evokes images of proactive doctors working closely with patients to really understand their problems and symptoms, delving deep into the pathology of whatever condition they are complaining about. But in my experience, typical doctors in the US are not in the least bit interested in actually studying medical conditions that come across their desk (or, more appropriately, forwarding the situation on to a research pathologist). They usually have a pragmatic "if it hurts when you do that, then don't do that" or "if you are bleeding, I can help you but otherwise you are on your own" attitude. If I came to my doctor and said "hot and cold are reversed after I ate some shellfish," I'm pretty sure the response would be "then don't eat it next time, it just happens to some unlucky people. Drink some water, get some rest, it will go away in a month. That will be $200. Next!" In fact, I'm pretty sure the discussion of shellfish wouldn't even come up because the conversation never seems to get as far as that. I speak with some experience here because I have suffered from a couple of unusual (but not deadly) medical conditions. The response is always the same: "some unlucky people just have that and we don't know why. Have a nice day." Is it something I ate? Something I did? Something in my physiology? Something genetic? "We don't know. Have a nice day." But wouldn't they want to know? I blame this intellectual laziness on HMOs, which tend to put otherwise motivated doctors in a terrible bind. If a doctor wants to do some test to study an unusual condition, they have to justify it to a big business that will determine if the procedure was "necessary." If the procedure is deemed unnecessary but is done anyway, then the patient gets stuck with the bill. If the patient defaults, then the doctor must pay out of pocket. Such procedures are usually very expensive and doctors who do informative procedures that the HMO deems "unnecessary" (even if they are totally legitimate) can easily go bankrupt. In short, there is no motivation for doctors under HMOs to go the extra mile to really understand the cases they are studying in detail.
    • Doctors aren't researchers. They're doctors, they're supposed to do exactly what you describe. They use the existing knowledge of medicine and apply it to people's illnesses to make them feel better.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xPsi ( 851544 ) *
        Point well taken. However, cases must be forwarded by doctors to researchers somewhere on the planet (like in the case of TFA). I'm just not sure what criteria they use.

    • Uh, no.... (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      hey won't dismiss you just like that. They'll first try two or three expensive medicines by the drug company sponsoring them that week, and THEN dismiss you. Well, after also prescribing the antidote (if any) to their earlier prescriptions.

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