• fiat_lux@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Poor bastard must have been itchy as fuck. Sadly the article on a shitty ad infested site is also padded out for word count. So here is the important parts. Hand-summarised, unlike the AI-assisted article:

    • A 72-year-old man presented with a 2-day history of an itchy, linear rash across his back. Two days before symptom onset, he had prepared and eaten a meal containing shiitake mushrooms. - Paywalled report from New England Journal of Medicine
    • Caused by the carbohydrate lentinan which triggers the release of interleukin-1 (and other chemicals), which causes cause inflammation.
    • The rash develops usually 2-3 days after eating undercooked shiitake.
    • Lentinan is broken down when thoroughly cooked at temperatures over 145° C / 293° F

    Because fuck shitty pop-science padded journalism and their marketing strategies and hostile UX, and fuck the NEJM too for paywalling medical research.

    • ToxicWaste
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      1 year ago

      Not sure if the 145°C is a citation/translation error by the site. If the mushroom is boiled in water (e.g. hotpot), it will never reach those temperatures.

      • fiat_lux@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I got it from the quote in the article from the author of the NEJM paper. You’re correct, but this seems to also happen in maybe 2% of people, and there’s a good chance 145C is only needed to be absolutely certain all sugars have 100% broken down. Hotpots might still get rid of most of it at 100C. I’m not a polysaccharine decomposition expert though, even though I know they’re very heat-sensitive.

        If you’re really worried (which you probably don’t need to be given it’s rarity), mushrooms can’t really be overcooked (unless you literally burn them), so nuking them in the microwave with a thin coat of oil or frying them off will help get them to temp if you want to be really certain.

        Second source from non-paywalled:

        It affects about 2% of people that consume the mushrooms raw or only lightly cooked… in people of all ages, … more often male than female.
        …shiitake dermatitis is not seen with the ingestion of thoroughly cooked at a temperature > 145 C.
        - Shiitake flagellate dermatitis