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February 02, 2005
Here is an idiotic article -
From the Daily Californian comes this poorly researched article:
Pathogen of the Week: Ciguatera Fish PoisoningBy SHARON TANG-QUAN
Contributing Writer
Wednesday, February 2, 2005The next time you’re at a ritzy seafood restaurant in the Virgin Islands beware: you could be the victim of Ciguatera fish poisoning. Contaminated tropical reef fish have the ability to cause symptoms within a few minutes of digestion.
Dinoflagellates are the microscopic sea plants that produce the ciguatoxins that result in ciguatera poisoning. The toxicity increases as a large fish eats the small fish that ate the dinoflagellates, thus the large predatory tropical reef fish usually contain the highest concentrations of toxicity. (there's more...)
Anyway - where does something like this even come from? Have you ever known of a "ritzy" V.I. restaurant that serves reef fish? This is just such a stupid commentary I don't even know how to explain it. I scratch my head when people write stuff like this.
Posted by afinta at February 2, 2005 09:46 AM
Comments
Its not so stupid, you only have to eat fish, that has eaten fish that somewhere down the food chain has eaten reef fish. I accidentally ate a seafood pizza that had some ciguatera contaminated fish. I was completely incapacitated for the last two years. I'm only just returning to part-time work, and I'm heavily medicated to control the symptoms, which appear to be chronic.
Several specises of tuna are at risk of being tainted with the poison, and other commonly eaten fish.
I am now restricted from eating all seafood, alcohol and nuts. I have no guarantee that I will ever make a full recovery, before I get harmful effects from the two steroids with which I'm being treated.
The fish test isn't legislated, so its not commonly used, and the blood test isn't available outside of Hawaii, so not many diagnoses are being correctly made.
Posted by: Ian at March 22, 2005 10:52 AM
Hi Ian - it sounds like you are in Hawaii? Sorry to hear how sick you got - that sounds very serious. My point was more about the whole tone of the story - there just aren't any "swanky" restaurants here that are going to serve tainted fish. I agree that large tunas (and from recent reports farmed salmon) can be full of harmful things, but the story makes it sound like you get sick eating fish in the better restaurants in the Virgin Islands, and that just isn't the case here.
I have to ask though - from what I know about the disease it doesn't sound like the thing can last 2 years if you only had that one pizza - are you having other complications/allergic reations, etc?
Get well -
Anthony
Posted by: Anthony at March 22, 2005 12:18 PM
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