OUTBREAK OF SUSPECTED SOLANINE POISONING IN SCHOOLBOYS - EXAMINATION OF CRITERIA OF SOLANINE POISONING

  • 1 January 1979
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 48  (190) , 227-243
Abstract
On the 2nd day of the autumn term 78 London [England, United Kingdom] schoolboys became ill after eating potatoes at lunch. Seventeen of the boys required admission to the hospital. The gastrointestinal, circulatory, neurological and dermatological findings and the results of laboratory investigations were in keeping with solanine poisoning. The illness affected the junior boys and all the monitors but no other senior boys or staff. This pattern was compatible with the consumption of a relatively small number of toxic potatoes believed to have come from a bag (A) left in storeage since the summer term. The amount of solanine in potato waste recovered after the meal was excessive as assessed by its anticholinesterase activity. The amount of .alpha.-solanine and .alpha.-chaconine in the flesh and peel of potatoes from a bag (B) known to have been left from the previous term was high. The anomalously narrow margin between the solanidine alkaloid content reported for normal and toxic potatoes might perhaps result from an excessive synthesis by the latter of additional related steroids, such as sapogenins and saponins, which, by promoting gastrointestinal absorption or by other means, might enhance the toxicity of solanidine alkaloid.