Marine Toxins

Marine toxins are naturally occurring chemicals that can contaminate certain seafood. The seafood contaminated with these chemicals frequently looks, smells, and tastes normal. When humans eat such seafood, disease can result. The most common diseases caused by marine toxins in United States in order of incidence are scombrotoxic fish poisoning, ciguatera poisoning, paralytic shellfish poisoning, neurotoxic shellfish poisoning and amnesic shellfish poisoning. Marine toxins are naturally occurring chemicals.

Marine toxins are produced by algae or bacteria and are concentrated in contaminated seafood. Substantial increases in seafood consumption in recent years, together with globalization of the seafood trade, have increased potential exposure to these agents. Marine toxins produce neurological, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular syndromes, some of which result in high mortality and long-term morbidity. Routine clinical diagnostic tests are not available for these toxins; diagnosis is based on clinical presentation and a history of eating seafood in the preceding 24 h.

There is no specific antidote for ciguatoxin or maitotoxin poisonings. Treatment is generally for specific symptoms and includes supportive care. Intravenous mannitol has been reported in uncontrolled studies to reduce the severity and duration of neurologic symptoms, particularly if given within 48 hours of the appearance of symptoms.

The presence of phytoplankton responsible for the production of lipophilic marine biotoxins is well recognised throughout parts of South America. To date, the quantitation of lipophilic toxins in Argentinean shellfish has been limited to select and highly focussed geographical studies. This work reports the analysis for lipophilic marine biotoxins in shellfish harvested across five regions of Argentina between 1992 and 2012. LC-MS/MS analysis was used for the quantitation of all regulated lipophilic toxins.