Epidemiological features of the mycotoxicoses.

Abstract: Although mycotoxicoses attract more and more attention, the epidemiology of these diseases is still not adequately studied. The author devotes his study to certain diseases. In addition to the diseases whose mycotoxic nature is in no doubt, he conditionally includes certain diseases whose mycotoxic causation needs further proof. The author has assigned stachybotryotoxicosis and alimentary toxic aleukia or fusariotoxicosis to the first category and endemic nephropathy and primary liver-cell carcinoma to the second. His intention in adopting this approach is to establish the common features and differences in their epidemiological manifestations. Epidemiological studies not only help to define the incidence and prevalence of these disease but also make an important contribution to the determination of their nature. When stachybotryotoxicosis--the "unknown horse disease"--was being studied in the mid-thirties, in the Ukraine, the research workers headed by V. G. DROBOTKO, noticed that horses belonging to the Army remained unaffected while in the same localities those belonging to the collective farms were stricken by this "unknown disease". This epidemiological phenomenon suggested the hypothesis that the unknown diseases must be due to fodder, which was different for horses belonging to the Army and those belonging to the collective farms. This led members of the team to investigate the mycoflora of the fodder. The collective farmers themselves had noted the link between the disease and the feeding of poor quality musty straw to horses. For that reason in every collective farm where such cases occurred samples of the available fodder were studied. The numerous investigations remained fruitless for a long time until P. D. JATEL discovered straw which had been fed to horses before an outbreak of the disease. This straw contained a blackened layer copiously overgrown with the fungus Stachybotrys alternans. Feeding of fodder infected with that fungus to experimental horses reproduced the pattern of the "unknown disease", which thereafter began to be known as "stachybotryotoxicosis". When human stachybotryotoxocosis was studied, all the clues in the epidemiological investigation pointed to barley straw as a source of the disease. F. A. LINNIK (1938) noted that immediately before falling sick patients had been in close contact with musty straw. Among collective farmers the disease had a sudden onset and was mainly confined to men. No one contracted the disease who had not something to do with this musty straw. The members of the families of the patients also remained in good health. The disease bore a familial character when farmers had used the straw as litter on their private holdings. In their study of the nature of alimentary toxic aleukia, S. G. MIRONOV and M. K...