Food Poisoning Caused by Sunfish Masturus lanceolatus
in Taiwan

KEN-MEN HUANG¹, SHIU-MEI LIU¹*, YAO-WEN HUANG^2,4, KEN-LIN HUANG³ AND
DENG-FWU HWANG⁴

^1. Institute of Marine Biology, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
^2. Department of Food Science and Technology, Center for Food Safety, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-7610, U.S.A.
^3. Department of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Asia University, Wufeng, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
^4. Department of Food Science. National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan, R.O.C.

(Received: September 7, 2010; Accepted: March 24, 2011)

ABSTRACT

Attempts was made to clarify the toxicity and species of causative sunfish fillet concerning with a food poisoning. The frozen causative sunfish fillet was collected to determine its toxicity after two people eating it found poisoned. Tetrodotoxin (TTX) was not detected, however, the butanol extract of remained causative muscle showed ichthyotoxicity to gold carp and caused human, rat and tilapia red blood cells haemolysis. Patients and rats showed some symptoms similar to those caused by palytoxin. Hence, it is possible that this food poisoning is caused by a palytoxin-like compound. Moreover, fish species of the sunfish fillet was identified by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). A PCR primer set (L14735/H15149) was used to amplify the partial fragment of the cytochrome b gene. Endonucleases Stu I was used in RFLP. The species of the causative sample was identified as Masturus lamceolatus.

Key words: PCR-RFLP, sunfish, Masturus lamceolatus, palytoxin, haemolysis