ergot poisoning
Producers finding ergot in cereal crops, grasses due to wet spring
By MSU News Service
Friday, October 12, 2007 11:59 AM MDT
BOZEMAN - Montana's cool, wet spring conditions have led to a fungus in cereal crops and grasses that can lead to livestock poisonings, says a Montana State University plant pathologist.
The fungus ergot can poison any livestock, but reports are a bit more frequent when horses or young calves are involved, said MSU's Barry Jacobsen.
"With the conditions we've got, we're going to find it everywhere that it has been wet, and there are only a few places in Montana that have not been wet," Jacobsen said.
Ergot forms hard purple to black masses that replace individual grains or seeds. While MSU has had some reports of infections already, most ergot infections won't be reported for a few more weeks when grasses and cereal grains have headed. The ergot fungus, Claviceps purpurea, produces dark purple to black sclerotia or ergots. As little as 0.1 percent ergot in rations can have adverse effects on livestock health and performance.
While ergot is most common in rye and triticale, it also occurs on wheat and occasionally on barley. It is relatively uncommon in oats, Jacobsen said.
Grasses commonly infected include; quackgrass, brome grass, red top, feather grass, foxtail, rye grass, orchard grass, crested wheat grass and timothy. In many cases, ergot produced in native grasses are the major source of infection for wheat and other cereal crops.
Jacobsen said that pastures should be checked for ergot infections. If ergot is widespread, the grass heads should be cut and left to dry several weeks before grazing. The black ergot "sclerotia" vary from one inch long on rye to less than a quarter inch on some grasses. In most cases, the sclerotia will be similar or slightly larger than healthy seeds.
Soon after infection, a yellowish-white or orange colored sticky fluid exudes from infected flowers. This is the honey-dew stage of the disease. The sticky fluid contains spores of the ergot fungus, which are spread by insects or rain splash to other grass flowers. Infections can take place as long as pollination is occurring. Warm-hot dry weather is unfavorable for infection.
Ergots contains alkaloids, which can cause a wide variety of symptoms ranging from fatigue, inflammation and blistering of skin, painful burning sensations, muscle spasms, backward arching of the back, convulsions, itching, numbness of extre-mities, dry gangrene particularly of the nose, ears, tails and limbs, loss of extremities, hallucinations, permanent insanity, abortion, loss of milk production, lack of mammary gland development and death.
"Every year that conditions favor ergot, we have one or two livestock deaths reported," Jacobsen said.
Typically, lameness in the hind limbs may appear from two to six weeks after the animal has ingested ergot. How ill the animals get depends on how much alkaloid there was in the sclerotia, the frequency and quantity of ergot sclerotia ingested and age and reproductive status of the animal.
Pastures with headed grasses should be checked for ergot infection before grazing. If a pasture has been grazed and no headed grasses are available to inspect, examine grasses outside of grazing range along fences for signs of ergot.
The only treatment for ergot poisoning is to remove the contaminated feeds or remove animals from contaminated pasture. If advanced symptoms are present, consult a veterinarian about supplemental therapy.
Ergot poisoning can only be prevented by providing feeds or forage free of ergot sclerotia.
Since ergot will likely be common this year, Jacobsen recommended avoiding feeding of wheat screenings as they will likely be contaminated. Many ergot bodies will be found in wheat screenings.
Practical control of ergot should be based on planting seed free of sclerotia. Commercial grain lots can be screened to remove ergot sclerotia and growers should be aware that grain having more than 0.05 percent ergot by weight cannot be sold for human consumption.
Sclerotia can be removed from seed lots by modern seed cleaning equipment or by brine floation techniques. Seed treatment triazole fungicides such as Dividend and Raxil applied to ergots in seed lots will reduce the viability of sclerotia.
Rotations that allow for a one year absence of susceptible cereal or grassy weeds will markedly reduce the number of viable sclerotia in soil.
Tillage that buries sclerotia deeper than 1-2 inches will prevent the release of spores to the aerial environment.
Control of grassy weeds in wheat production fields will reduce the number of sclerotia in fields. Burning wheat stubble also reduces the viable sclerotia. Mowing or chemical treatment of headland, roadway and ditch bank grasses to prevent heading will eliminate these grasses as a source of infection.
Wheat cultivars vary widely in their susceptibility and resistance is available.
In general, those cultivars with shorter flowering times and more closed florets are less susceptible. Cultivars with only short susceptible times following pollination are also less susceptible. Based on limited data, triticale is more susceptible than durum wheat and soft wheats are the least susceptible.
Ergot resistance should be a significant factor in cultivar selection in regions where ergot is endemic.
This story is available on the Web at:
Producers finding ergot in cereal crops, grasses due to wet springThe Prairie Star, USA
- Oct 14, 2007
- Oct 14, 2007
The only treatment for ergot poisoning is to remove the contaminated feeds or remove animals from contaminated pasture. If advanced symptoms are present, ...
clipped from Google - 10/2007
More news results ?
Blog posts
Ergot Oct 10, 2007
Online resources and links for User:Ergot. Ergot Poisoning My brother Kyle leaves a peculiar message on my answering machine after eating a rotten Reuben Sandwich. Strmz video user-video comedy humor funny. Dad Watches (Endpapers) from ...
Ergot Poisoning Apr 21, 2007
Anthony's Fire or ergot poisoning was often seen as punishment from the Gods in earlier history. The epidemics of ergotism was not isolated until the seventh century. Finally, it become widely known by the 1880s. ...
ergonomics careers Oct 17, 2007
... ergot derivatives ergot ergotism poisoning ergot fungus ergot kramers ergot lsd ergot of rye ergot poisoning ergot poisoning salem ergot poisoning salem witch trials ergot poisoning symptoms ergot poisoning theory ergot poisoning ...
Web results
Ergot Poisoning (LSD) - the cause of the Salem Witch Trials - PBS ...
Ergot Poisoning (LSD) - the cause of the Salem Witch Trials - PBS Secrets of the Dead.
Ergotism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ergotism is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, classically due to the ... It is also known as ergotoxicosis, ergot poisoning and St Anthony's fire. ...
No. 1037: Rye Ergot and Witches
Many symptoms of ergot poisoning and the plague are similar. They probably coexisted. The worst plague damage occurred where ergot suppressed the human ...
A diagnosis of ergot poisoning is based on finding the sclerotia in the feed or pasture and whether the animals are exhibiting symptoms of ergotism. ...
Ergotism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
"St Anthony's Fire " redirects here. For the Doctor Who novel, see St Anthony's Fire (Doctor Who).
Ergotism is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, classically due to the ingestion of the alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus which infects rye and other cereals, and more recently by the action of a number of ergoline-based drugs. It is also known as ergotoxicosis, ergot poisoning and St Anthony's fire (not to be confused with shingles, which is also known as St. Anthony's fire in Italy and in Malta).[1]
Contents
1 Causes
2 Symptoms
2.1 Convulsive symptoms
2.2 Gangrenous symptoms
3 History
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
[edit] Causes
The toxic ergoline derivatives are found in ergot-based drugs (such as methylergometrine, ergotamine or, previously, ergotoxine). The deleterious side-effects occur either under high dose or when moderate doses interact with potentiators such as azithromycin.
Classically, eating grain products contaminated with the fungus Claviceps purpurea also caused ergotism.
Finally, the alkaloids can also pass through lactation from mother to child, causing ergotism in infants.
[edit] Symptoms
The symptoms can be roughly divided into convulsive symptoms and gangrenous symptoms.
[edit] Convulsive symptoms
Convulsive symptoms include painful seizures and spasms, diarrhea, paresthesias, itching, headaches, nausea and vomiting. Usually the gastrointestinal effects precede central nervous system effects. As well as seizures there can be hallucinations resembling those produced by LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), and mental effects including mania or psychosis. The convulsive symptoms are caused by clavine alkaloids.
[edit] Gangrenous symptoms
The dry gangrene is a result of vasoconstriction induced by the ergotamine-ergocristine alkaloids of the fungus. It affects the more poorly vascularized distal structures, such as the fingers and toes. Symptoms include desquamation, weak peripheral pulse, loss of peripheral sensation, edema and ultimately the death and loss of affected tissues.
[edit] History
Epidemics of the disease were identified throughout history, though the references in classical writers are inconclusive. Rye, the main vector for transmitting ergotism, was not grown much around the Mediterranean. When Fuchs 1834 separated references to ergotism from erysipelas and other afflictions he found the earliest reference to ergotism in the Annales Xantenses for the year 857: "a Great plague of swollen blisters consumed the people by a loathsome rot, so that their limbs were loosened and fell off before death."
In the Middle Ages the gangrenous poisoning was known as ignis sacer ("holy fire") or "Saint Anthony's fire", named after monks of the Order of St. Anthony who were particularly successful at treating this ailment. The 12th century chronicler Geoffroy du Breuil of Vigeois recorded the mysterious outbreaks in the Limousin region of France, where the gangrenous form of ergotism was associated with the local Saint Martial as much as Saint Anthony.
The blight, named from the cock's spur it forms on grasses, was identified and named by Denis Dodart who reported the relation between ergotized rye and bread poisoning in a letter to the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1676 (John Ray mentioning ergot for the first time in English the next year), but "ergotism" in this modern sense was first recorded in 1853.
Research by Linda Caporael (1976) suggests that many of the people whose accusations resulted in the 1692 Salem witch trials in Massachusetts were genuinely suffering hallucinations and other symptoms of convulsive ergotism.
Similar eruptions of ergotism also occurred in Essex and Fairfield counties in Connecticut that damp and cool season, though in Connecticut no one went to the gallows. Notable epidemics of ergotism, at first seen as a punishment from God, occurred up into the 19th century. Fewer outbreaks have occurred since then, because in developed countries rye is carefully monitored.
When milled the ergot is reduced to a red powder, obvious in lighter grasses but easy to miss in dark rye flour. In less wealthy countries ergotism still occurs: there was an outbreak in Ethiopia in mid-2001 from contaminated barley. Whenever there is a combination of moist weather, cool temperatures, delayed harvest in lowland crops and rye consumption an outbreak is possible. Russia has been particularly afflicted.
Poisonings due to consumption of seeds treated with mercury compounds are sometimes misidentified as ergotism, such as the case of mass-poisoning in the French village Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951: The incident is described in John Grant Fuller's book The Day of St Anthony's Fire.
The mass poisoning which took place in the French town of Pont-St. Esprit in 1951 has been widely presented in the lay and scientific press as an example of ergotism. While the poisoning was traced to bread, ergotism was not the cause of the syndrome, which was due to a toxic mercury compound used to disinfect grain to be planted as seed. Some sacks of grain treated with the fungicide were inadvertently ground into flour and baked into bread. Albert Hofmann arrived at this conclusion after visiting Pont-St. Esprit, and analyzing samples of the bread (which contained no ergot alkaloids) and autopsy samples of four of the victims who succumbed (Hofmann 1980; Hofmann 1991). On the other hand, Swedish toxicologist Bo Holmstedt insists the poisoning was in fact due to ergotism (Holmstedt 1978). ...[2]
[edit] See also
Ergot
Ergine
Ergolines
Alkaloids
[edit] References
^ Zamula, Evelyn (2005). Shingles:An Unwelcome Encore. United State Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved on 2007-04-10.
^ Jonathan Ott, Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, their Plant Sources and History (Kennewick, W.A.: Natural Products Co., 1993), pg. 145. See also Dr. Albert Hofmann, LSD: My Problem Child (New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980), Chapter 1: "How LSD Originated," pg. 6.
As Dr. Simon Cotton (member of the Chemistry Department of Uppingham School, U.K.) notes, there have been numerous cases of mass-poisoning due to consumption of mercury-treated seeds:
More horrifying than this were epidemics of poisoning, caused by people eating treated seed grains. There was a serious epidemic in Iraq in 1956 and again in 1960, whilst use of seed wheat (which had been treated with a mixture of C2H5HgCl and C6H5HgOCOCH3) for food, caused the poisoning of about 100 people in West Pakistan in 1961. Another outbreak happened in Guatemala in 1965. Most serious was the disaster in Iraq in 1971-2, when according to official figures 459 died. Grain had been treated with methyl mercury compounds as a fungicide and should have been planted. Instead it was sold for milling and made into bread. It had been dyed red as a warning and also had warning labels in English and Spanish that no one could understand.
See Simon Cotton, B.Sc., Ph.D., "Dimethylmercury and Mercury Poisoning", Molecule of the Month (MOTM; published on the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, U.K. website), October 2003.
George Barger, "Ergot and ergotism," 1931. Abstract.
Linnda Caporael, "Ergotism: the Satan loosed in Salem?", Science 1976;192:21-6. Fulltext. PMID 769159.
John Grant Fuller, The Day of St Anthony's Fire (1968). Pont St. Esprit incident of 1951.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home