A Case of Amnesia Complicated by Poisoning of the Amanita Pantherina

ABSTRACT

Amanita pantherina and Amanita muscaria have been called hallucinogenic fungi. They contain ibotenic acid and muscimol. Patients may appear to be intoxicated or have apparent 'patherina-muscaria' syndrome, which is atropine-like, but fatality is rare. Confusion, dizziness, tiredness, visual and auditory hypersensitivity, space distortion, unawareness of time, dryness of the mouth, mydriasis and hallucination may occur. Also, in exceptionally rare severe poisoning cases, convulsion, coma and death may occur. A 50-year-old well-nourished and developed man was admitted to this hospital with a 30-minute history of semicoma and involuntary contraction of the extremities which had developed following mushroom ingestion 2 hours earlier. Ingested mushrooms were revealed to be A. pantherina by a mycologist. The patient recovered 7 hours later after only supportive management, but the next day he couldn't recalled any of his hospital duration from admission to 20 hours later. Only a few reports have precise descriptions of the subspecies of the genus and there was no reports on poisoning by A. pantherina in Korea. In addition, there are no reports of amnesia following poisoning by A. pantherina. For these reasons, we report this case, together with a review of the literature.