One of my physician colleagues has come across a patient with a problem
at one of his outreach clinics. This clinic serves a relatively
isolated community with a steelworks as the main employer. The patient
has a partiality for whelks. This has reached such a pitch that he
spends his holidays looking for the best source. His nirvana, which he
now visits annually, is Oban where he feasts on the local red whelks.
However, he has noticed that after his gastronomic passion is sated, he
suffers from diplopia and paraesthesiae in his hands. He is convinced
that this problem is getting worse, year by year. He is also convinced
that there is a serious public health problem, despite reassurance that,
as far as we are aware, the West of Scotland has not been depopulated by
a surfeit of molluscs.
Granted that most of the diplopia in Oban is the fruit of barley rather
than seafood, there is, however, an interesting point that presumably
there is a neurotoxin at work here. Does anybody know what it is, is it
the whelks or something in the seawater round Oban, whether it can be
assayed, and if there are any manoevres, apart from a frustrating
abstinence from whelks, that can diminish the side effects. I suspect
that it may be dose related because he admits to eating far more than
anyone else. The whelks available locally in Sheffield are not "red
whelks", and this anaemic local fare does not provoke the problem even
when eaten in large numbers.
My colleague awaits replies with interest !
Trevor
Dr. T.A. Gray
Department of Clinical Chemistry
Northern General Hospital
Sheffield S5 7AU
0114 271 4309
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