From LiveScience:
A combination of cocaine and toxic pufferfish liver sent a Florida man to the emergency room, according to a new case report.....MORE
The liver from a pufferfish, also known as fugu, is considered a delicacy in Japan. But eating it is risky, as the fish's liver contains a high concentration of a deadly poison known as tetrodotoxin (TTX), which causes paralysis if ingested.
"Pufferfish is something that you don't want to just catch and eat," said Dr. Zane Horowitz, medical director at the Oregon Poison Center at Oregon Health Science University, who was not involved with the man's case. "There are chefs in Japan who go through years of training on how to properly prepare this so that they don't kill their customers." [In Photos: The Power of Poison Through Time]
TTX is 1,200 times more toxic than cyanide; far less than a teaspoon of it can kill a person. Once ingested, TTX blocks voltage-gated sodium channels in certain nerve cells. When these nerve cells are blocked, muscles can't contract. Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from tingling sensations, numbness, dizziness and nausea, to muscle weakness, trouble breathing, paralysis and death.
Because there's no antidote to TTX, doctors often place patients on ventilators to help them breathe until the body excretes the poison.
The 43-year-old man's case was more complex than a typical fugu-eater's, however. Over the past few days, he had ingested cocaine and eaten canned foods, which made his physicians wonder whether foodborne botulism was at play, too.
The man had high blood pressure (possibly from his cocaine use) and chronic kidney disease, the doctors noted. When he came to the ER, the man was not in good shape; he was throwing up, had weakness and difficulty speaking, and said that he had stomach pain, tearing chest pain and numb legs....
