An ‘Impossible’ Disease Outbreak in the Alps
www.theatlantic.com
In one tiny town, more than a dozen people were diagnosed with the rare neurodegenerative disease ALS. Why?

From the responses, the team learned that the ALS patients were not the only mushroom foragers in town, but they shared an affinity for a particular species that local interviewees without ALS said they never touched: the false morel.

  • someguy3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    85·
    5 days ago

    The false morel contains gyromitrin, a toxin that sickens some number of foragers around the world every year; half of the ALS victims in Montchavin reported a time when they had acute mushroom poisoning. And according to Spencer, the human body may also metabolize gyromitrin into a compound that, over time, might lead to similar DNA damage as cycad seeds.

    Fascinating.