Mould sugarcane poisoning refers to acute food poisoning caused by eating moldy sugarcane, which is mostly moldy due to improper storage. The mildew sugarcane is soft, the flesh is darker than the normal sugarcane, light brownish-red, it smells mildly mildew, and it smells of moldy acid distiller's grains.
The fungus can be isolated from the moldy sugarcane, i.e., Arthrosporium sugarcane. Its toxin, 3-nitropropionic acid, is a neurotoxin that mainly damages the central nervous system.
Manifestations of intoxication
The incubation period of moldy sugarcane poisoning is short (10 minutes ~ 17 hours), and most of them develop 2~8 hours after ingestion.
Symptoms of poisoning begin as transient gastrointestinal disturbances with nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhoea, followed by neurological symptoms such as headache, dizziness, blurred vision, visual or double vision, weakness of the lower limbs, and inability to stand.
In severe cases, vomiting is violent, the stool is black, as well as hematuria, fever, confusion, paroxysmal convulsions, head tilted back, limbs stiff, arms bent back, hands are claw-shaped, both eyeballs are tilted upwards and stared to one side, pupils are dilated, trismus is closed, sweating, drooling, loss of consciousness, and then enter a coma. Patients can die of respiratory failure, and survivors are left with severe neurological sequelae that closely resemble the sequelae of encephalitis, leading to lifelong disability.
Treatment of poisoning
At present, there is no special treatment for mildew sugarcane poisoning, and patients should be sent to the hospital for emergency treatment immediately.
● Patients with early poisoning should be given rapid gastric lavage or enema to excrete toxins, and symptomatic treatments should be adopted, such as protecting the liver and kidneys, correcting water and electrolyte metabolism disorders, and acidosis.
● An appropriate amount of sedative can be given to relieve pain.
● If cerebral edema is suspected, dehydrating agents and hormones can be used.
● Severe patients should be given drugs to promote the metabolism of brain tissue.
● People who are in a coma should be given a revitalizer.
Poisoning prevention
● Sugarcane must be harvested after ripening because immature sugarcane is prone to mildew.
● Sugarcane should be sold as soon as possible.
● Sugarcane should be prevented from mildew during storage, the storage time should not be too long, and the sugarcane should be regularly subjected to sensory inspection.
● Pay attention when buying sugar cane
√ Appearance: The stalks of high-quality sugarcane are thick and smooth, upright and straight, shiny, purple on the surface and hung with hoarfrost, and there are no moth-eaten holes, while inferior or mildewy sugarcane often has a thin skin color or loss of luster, and traces of moth-eaten can be seen between nodes or on subsections.
√ Pulp tissue: high-quality sugarcane can be peeled to see white flesh, compact texture, fine fiber, rich in juice, while inferior sugarcane has coarse and hard fiber, less juice, soft and loose texture, and the profile is gray-black, brownish-yellow or light yellow after cutting, and reddish-brown stripes or blue-black spots of different thicknesses can be seen in the fiber.
√ Smell and taste: high-quality sugarcane has more juice, sweetness, more water, less residue, sweet and refreshing;
Reminder to consume
There are a few mold spots on a sugar cane, while the other parts look normal and show no signs of mold, and they are still inedible after being cut with a knife because the sugar cane has a high water content, and mycotoxins can freely penetrate into it and transfer to other places.
Content Sources:
People's Medical Publishing House published "Chinese Farmers' Health Care Series: Self-help for Family Emergencies and Accidental Injuries"
Editor-in-Chief of the book:
Xue Yuankun, chief physician of Aoyang Hospital affiliated to Jiangsu University
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