International Journal of Analytical Mass Spectrometry and Chromatography, 2013, 1, 109-118 Published Online December 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ijamsc) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ijamsc.2013.12014 Structure Elucidation of a New Toxin from the Mushroom Cortinarius rubellus Using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) Ilia Brondz1,2 1Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 2R & D Department of Jupiter Ltd., Ski, Norway Email:
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[email protected] Received October 28, 2013; revised November 24, 2013; accepted December 27, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Ilia Brondz. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Cortinarius orellanus (Fries) and C. rubellus (Cooke), which were formerly also known as C. speciosissimus, are poi- sonous mushrooms containing the toxin orellanine and several degradation products of orellanine, including orelline and orellinine. Mass intoxication by poisonous mushrooms was observed in Poland in 1952-1957 [1]. In 1957, the cause of these outbreaks was described by Grzymala as poisoning by a member of the Cortinarius family. The toxin orellanine was first isolated from C. orellanus by Grzymala in 1962; the chemical structure of orellanine was later de- termined to be 3,3,4,4-tetrahydroxy-2,2-bipyridine-N,N-dioxide. Poisoning with C. orellanus and C. rubellus has a very specific character. The first symptoms of intoxication usually do not appear until 2 - 3 days after ingestion, but in some cases intoxication appears after three weeks.