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Context: after eating a death cap (Amanita phalloides), you'd notice a few of the symptoms at first, but these usually resolve after a day or two. After this, you'll enter a latent phase where you feel fine, but your liver and kidneys slowly start to fail. By the time you notice, it's usually already too late.

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[-] Signtist@bookwyr.me 175 points 1 day ago

It's not just similar, it's the same symptom - they both kill you through damaging your cells' ability to create proteins, radiation through damage to the DNA itself, and amatoxins from deadly mushrooms through blocking of the cell's ability to read DNA to create mRNA, which is necessary for protein synthesis.

[-] bassomitron@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago

How do you even treat that? Seems like a pretty permanently damaging toxin?

[-] Signtist@bookwyr.me 8 points 17 hours ago

The damage is permanent on a cellular level - the affected cells will either die, or in the case of radiation exposure, can become cancerous instead. If you got a small enough exposure, and immediately sought medical attention to remove the toxin from your body in the case of amatoxin ingestion, then only some cells will be affected, and maybe your organs can continue functioning and eventually recover after the affected cells die off. If the damage is significant, you might survive if you get a liver transplant and dialysis, since the liver and kidneys are the most affected due to their role in filtering and removing toxens.

[-] Akasazh@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Thanks! Great read up on something I knew nothing about.

this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
422 points (98.2% liked)

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