HAZMAT report from Afghanistan re: wheat

[ensho]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?smp=&lang=eng


As many as 10 people have died in western Afghanistan from a rare liver disease believed to be caused by contaminated wheat, officials said Saturday. At least 161 people were also hospitalized with Gulran disease although estimates were as high as 200 affected in Herat province, on the Iranian border, said Peter Graaff, resident representative of the U.N. World Health Organization. A toxic weed called charmak, which grows in the area, contains alkalines that affect the liver causing Gulran disease, which is named after the affected district in Herat. Graaff said the disease is not new but rare, and has killed as many as 10 people in recent weeks. Abdul Hakim Tamana, the director of the Herat public health department, said 112 Gulran cases have been recorded in the province's clinics, and six people died. "It has spread all over Gulran district, including several villages," Tamana said. It was unclear exactly how the people became ill. The WHO is sending an epidemiologist from Geneva to Afghanistan next week to investigate. Graaff said charmak may have contaminated wheat grown in the region, flour or other foods.)
---------------------


charmak

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. What is Gulran disease?

It is linked to a common toxic weed called charmak.

How does it make people ill?
It is unclear. Among WHO theories are that consuming charmak seeds mixed with wheat or drinking milk from goats that graze on charmak may cause the disease. Salty well water and poor nutrition appear to make the effects worse.

Symptoms
Rapid liver damage, anorexia and fatigue. In advanced stages, patients develop hugely distended bellies, wasting and bruising.

Treatment
The mortality rate is high. Lack of knowledge among health professionals means response is often late. Toxicity can be reversed if treated early.

http://www.star-telegram.com/279/story/592867.html

[InkAddict]

2. Pyrrolizidine alkaloids in plants - charmak

http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc080.htm

Details of toxicity

[InkAddict]

3. And now for an LOL regarding the same chemical...

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/May99/ornatrix_tricks.hrs.html

An enduring nuptial gift is included in every sperm package from a male rattlebox moth (Utetheisa ornatrix)to his freshly mated female: a potent, plant-derived chemical that protects her for life against predatory spiders, biologists at Cornell University have discovered.

The first (but almost certainly, not the only) example of a sexually transmitted chemical defense to benefit a female animal is reported in the current (May 11, 1999) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Cornell biologists Andrés González, Carmen Rossini, Maria Eisner and Thomas Eisner. The protective chemical, pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) that the adult male obtains by eating rattlebox plants (Crotalaria mucronata) while in the larval stage, reaches every part of the female's body within minutes after mating, the biologists say. It also protects her eggs.

[ensho]

4. fascinating. thank you

nt