Palytoxin

[Kigs!]

Stumbled upon this link while surfing the net...thought I would share and have a discussion to better understand 'palytoxin.'

http://www.cbwinfo.com/Biological/Toxins/Palytoxin.html#0007

Few interesting excerpts from the site are,

"Palytoxin is the most toxic natural product known, it is estimated that the lethal dose for a human is less than five micrograms. "

"Palytoxin is an incredibly complex molecule with 64 stereocenters and a backbone of 115 contiguous carbon atoms."

If you have any other information or link on the subject, please share.

 

[Pufferpunk]

We were just discussing this at my club forum.

Althouth I prefer not to use gloves, I did have a couple of cuts on my knuckles on a day I fragged some palys & both got red, inflamed & gunk was coming out of them for a few days. And definately don't rub your eyes after handling them, even if you've washed your hands a few times! I had washed my hands 3x after handling palys. Dug something out of my eyes & they swelled up & crusted so bad I couldn't open them in the morning for 3 days, w/o soaking them 1st.

 

[shred5]

I was popping some bubble algae that was growing in some pallys and one popped and squirted me in the eye... Stupid, stupid, stupid. I went to work the next day and someone goes what happened to your eye, it was completely blood shot. The weird thing is a felt kind of stoned, dizzy and in a daze the hole day and took me a while to realize what actually was causing this.

I heard one guy had some in a bucket while he cleaned his tank. His dog came up and took a drink out of the bucket. It killed his dog in hrs.

People do not realize the toxins these thing produce and how dangerous they are. They can kill you. The problem is once you realize what is going on it is can be too late and what doctor is going to be prepared or even know how to treat something this rare.

Coralnutz believe me they are out there. I have been in this hobby along time and occasionally you will see a thread on RC about something like this. Allot of times you do not hear about it too because people have no idea what happened... i have also heard of alot of people having swelling and cracking and arthritus like symptoms from handeling lots of zoathius and palythoa.

Also I am not a doctor but I guess it would have to do with how much you got in your body. Might only kill you if injested but who knows for sure so it is better to exersize caution.

It also maybe that some people are more acceptable to this toxin too... Kind of like i once had a carpet anemone I forget which one, this was maybe 10+ years ago. I had handled it many times but it stung a girl and she had to be rushed to the hospital and she almost died.
Dave

 

[shred5]

http://www.garf.org/trever/foreignenvironmen.html

http://www.jbc.org/cgi/reprint/258/13/7900.pdf

 

[er1c_the_reefer]

i'd have to agree with coralnutz. not saying that palytoxin poisoning doesn't happen, but cases are rare, and few and far between.

remember that only certain species produce the toxin. also, understanding how palytoxin works helps: it basically eliminates the concentration gradient for Na+/K+ in your body, which basically ends up stopping the heart. that's why most symptoms are similar to that of a heart attack and death from poisoning would be rather quick. that's also why the lethal dose for dogs and rabbits would be far lower than for humans: they have a much faster metabolism.

now, i'm no doctor, but it's my guess that most cases of people reporting getting swollen and inflamed body parts (eyes, cuts, etc.) that don't go away for a few days are actually cases of bacterial infection. this is typical, especially taking into account that coral mucus can contain all sorts of bacteria such as vibrio, staphylococcus, streptococcus, and even the herpes virus, so do wear gloves.

 

[jandlms]

Good Point eric,
Also don't discount something as simple as a plain old allergic reaction to the palys or the mucous or anything else in the seawater.

 

[gflat65]

I'm not doubting for a second that palytoxin is deadly and that it's probably a good idea to wear gloves, just in case. But I have yet to ever see even 1 case of verified palytoxin poisoning from anyone working in a reeftank.

I have made a number of statements on this topic everytime it comes up over at RC and agree with coralnuts here. Of all the people in just the US that propagate zoas on a daily basis and for there to not be one actual documented case of palytoxin poisoning is reason enough for me to say that either their numbers are wrong, or there is very very little palytoxin in zoas. I've had experiences where I wasn't completely 'sober' (not all unpleasant, mind you, aside from a numb arm), but can't say for sure it was the palytoxin. I hear it thrown around alot, but I know with as much as I have fragged and never had any really unpleasantness, the actual threat isn't as hitgh as the perceived threat. It serves as scare tactics, which seem to get things done in this country, though (if we don't kill all the tourists, they're gonna kill us mentality). I think there have been at least two threads in the last two months on RC where a newbie writes in, oh no, I just touched my zoas, am I going to die a horribly disfiguring and painful death. Some may be more sensitive to it, but without any actually proof and documentation by people who would know, I'm not too concerned. If I die from some mutant strain of palytoxin, feel free to chisel we told ya so on my tombstone. Just my $0.02. Protect yourself in common sense and you should be fine.

 

[Kigs!]

I have to admit that many of the cases reported with mild symptoms, at least to me as an observer, seems mostly psychological. I will never know unless I experience it personally, and it almost makes me wish there could be more detailed study done on this topic. But then again, if there isn't any threat to be feared, why is the substance so highly feared? Why is it regarded as such a concentrated toxic chemical? Obviously we can agree that the "toxic" level is different with every morph out there, for instance, "Purple Death" can cause a pretty nasty sting when they squirt at you during a frag session, where as "Eagle Eyes" or "Radioactive Dragon Eyes" might not even phase the surface of our skin when touched.

now, i'm no doctor, but it's my guess that most cases of people reporting getting swollen and inflamed body parts (eyes, cuts, etc.) that don't go away for a few days are actually cases of bacterial infection. this is typical, especially taking into account that coral mucus can contain all sorts of bacteria such as vibrio, staphylococcus, streptococcus, and even the herpes virus, so do wear gloves.

eric, that's really interesting. I've never heard of corals carrying such bacteria. Could you clarify? Why are some of the bacteria harmful to humans carried along the coral mucus?

 

[er1c_the_reefer]

coral mucus carries millions of bacteria, much more so than if we were to compare it to a similar amount of surface on ourselves. check out this article here. although its done on mediterrean coral, the study pretty holds true for all coral regarding bacterial growth on the surface.

in regards to why it should be fear, it really shouldn't. there are only 2 species that i have read about that are confirmed to have palytoxin (palythoa toxica and some other one from the caribbean). the rest is just speculation because zoanthids and other palythoas are in the same family so might contain the toxin.

in regards to concentration, think of it this way: the LD50 for maculo/tetrodotoxin is about 0.07mg. the LD50 for VX nerve gas is 10mg. the LD50 (lethal dose for 50% of more of affected people) for palytoxin is about 5 micrograms.

 

[gflat65]

The threat of the evil palytoxin singlehandedly eradicated zoas from European tanks, if you believe people who like to hear themselves like Daniel Knop. It will never cease to amaze me that for someone who speaks so much about diversity in aquariums and natural effects, etc, but then to do all in his power to turn people agains zoas because he was dumb enough to scrub them out of a tank with a wire scrub brush and they killed his SPS (let's see, kill anything en masse in an aquarium and it's gonna kill other things-most likely not the toxin, Danny boy). Not sure why, but he gets me going. He has undoubtedly done a lot for the hobby, but when you build an agenda around something based on opinion and use your 'scientific' clout to further that agenda, you aren't helping the hobby. Too many references in Coral magazine from Daniel Knop and his buddies about how they have tackled the obstacles of pesty zoas in an aquarium (Knop takes full credit for single handedly stopping any interest in zoas in all of Europe-wish I thought that highly of myself...). Fear sets the agenda. This is nothing new to us. We live in America. Anyway-off to Lake Martin for the weekend. Gotta get my road rage out before I hit the road.

 

[Azurel]

I think Surf need to be in this discussion with his bio-chemical degree he can really shed some light on the subject......I think Coralnutz and a few others have said it best. I personally think it is a bit of a red herring.

 

[gflat65]

Al posted a chart (or link to a chart) some time back that had the lethal limits of palytoxin in mice. I did a linear extrapolation (though the response would most likely not be linear) to convert to a 200 pound man and it came out to somewhere around 16g of palytoxin. I checked my math several times and it seemed right, though like I said, the relationship is most likely more of an exponential than linear, so the lethal limit would most likely be much lower than that. I don;t know of any research on how much a typical polyp of a given species is liekly to have, though (maybe James Reimer knows of some-I'll see what i can find out). There is so little known about how much and which zoas have palytoxin. It might take eating a nice sized colony of something rich in palytoxin to die. Disclaimer-don't try this at home.