Shellfish have been eaten around the world for centuries as they are not only rich in lean protein, fats, and minerals, but they also add immunity and promote brain and heart health. However, they are also one of the common food allergens and some of them may even contain toxins that are life-threatening.

For example, a woman in New Zealand went from fit and healthy to being completely paralyzed from head-to-toe 12 hours after eating a toxic shellfish. She even thought that she was going to die from the ordeal.

Woman in New Zealand Warns of Toxic Shellfish That Paralyzed Her From Head to Toe After Eating It
(Photo : Wikimedia Commons/Pelagic)
Pippies (Plebidonax deltoides) in their shells for sale at a fishmonger in Blacktown, Western Sydney, NSW, AU. In this close view, the bed of shells fills the frame. Shells have olive green or golden pericostracum (darker browns are known but less common and not visible in this photo). The coating is worn in places to reveal the pink-mauve shell material underneath.

Toxic Shellfish Paralyzes Woman

Kim Taia told New Zealand Herald about her experience in eating pipi, a type of clam in Australia and New Zealand, in 2014. She told the news outlet that she started feeling a tingling sensation in her lips within half an hour of eating them and that sensation quickly progressed into affecting his face, followed by the numbness of her head and dizziness.

The paramedics could not find anything wrong with her, but Taia recalls that she was losing feeling in her arms and hands and that her head felt like she was in anesthesia. When she woke up in the morning, she found herself unable to move so she was sent back to the hospital as she was getting weaker and weaker.

"My breathing was slowing down and I thought I was going to die. I couldn't breathe. I became panicked by not having any diagnosis for what it was," she told New Zealand Herald.

Doctors finally found the culprit and identified the pipi shellfish that she ate, which caused the paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). This condition is due to a toxin from some species of microscopic algae that remains inside the tissue of the shellfish even after cooking it. The toxin could be found in clams, mussels, oysters, and scallops, but can also affect other species that eat them.

Taia stayed for four nights in the hospital and fortunately was able to heal from it. She did the interview with the news outlet whole helping Maori tribes take testing for the toxin that caused her the ordeal to make sure that it will not happen again.

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What Toxin Causes the Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning?

The toxin responsible for PSP is called Saxitoxin, which affects the nervous system by paralyzing the consumer. The Alaskan Division of Environmental Health said that one milligram of this toxin is enough to kill an adult.

Moreso, the Washington State Department of Health states that there is no antidote for PSP but the patient can be kept alive via a respirator. It is important for the toxin to leave the system so that the person could make a recovery.

During an algal bloom, the number of algae with this toxin could cause nearby shellfish contamination with dangerous levels of the toxin despite only a low population of the algae produces Saxitoxin.

In the past 10 years, New Zealand's Toi Te Ora Public Health Department has only recorded 45 cases of PSP in which most of which happened between 2012 and 2014, Newsweek reported.

 Experts from Cawthron Institute in New Zealand have provided Maori tribes some rapid testing kits to detect PSP-contaminated shellfish to avoid poisoning. Tim Harwood, a research scientist at the institute, told the New Zealand Herald that there are rare occurrences where people get sick and those are the kind of cases that they want to avoid.

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