The Poison Review

Clinical Events in Mad Honey Poisoning: A Single Centre Experience.  Bostan M et al.  Bull Environ Contam Toxicol Jan 2010;84:12-22.

Abstract

As TPR noted in a previous post entitled “Mad Honey Sex“, pollen of certain Rhododendron species contains grayanotoxins, cyclic hydrocarbons that maintain sodium channels of nervous tissue in the open position, depolarizing the nerve cells.  Important presenting signs and symptoms of mad honey poisoning include dizziness, hypotension, and bradycardia.  Toxicity usually resolves with support, administration of fluids, and treatment with atropine for hemodynamically significant bradycardia.

This paper, from Rize Training and Research Hospital in Turkey, reviews 33 patients with diagnosis of mad honey poisoning seen in their emergency department over a 21 month period.  Unfortunately, their methods section is so muddy that it was not even clear to me whether this was a prospective or retrospective study.  In any case, there’s nothing here that adds to what is known form multiple other papers on this topic.  There is one amusing typo: “The honey is widely used as alternative therapies for the reduction in the risk of coroner heart disease”.

As long as we’re on the topic, it’s worth recalling the description of mad honey poisoning in Xenophon’s Anabasis (~ 400 B.C.):

“Here, generally speaking, there was nothing to excite their wonderment, but the numbers of bee-hives were indeed astonishing, and so were certain properties of the honey.  The effect upon the soldiers who tasted the combs was, that they all went for the nonce quite off their heads, and suffered from vomiting and diarrhea, with a total inability to stand steady on their legs.  A small dose produced a condition not unlike violent drunkenness, a large one an attack very like a fit of madness, and some dropped down, apparently at death’s door.  So they lay, hundreds of them, as if there had been a great defeat, a prey to the cruelest despondency.  But the next day, none had died, and almost at the same hour of the day at which they had eaten they recovered their senses, and on the third or fourth day got on their legs again like convalescents after a severe course of medical treatment.”

(cited in Clin Toxicol 2008;46:437;   source: Fordham University Web Site)

And finally, this seems like an appropriate musical selection to accompany this topic: