High individual variation in the toxicity of three species of marine puffer in Vietnam

In Vietnam, several poisonings due to consumption of marine puffers have been reported every year for a long time, even recently. In most cases, the causative species were those commonly found in Vietnam such as Torquigener gloerfelti, Takifugu oblongus and Lagocephalus sceleratus. In this study, the toxicity of various organs (skin, muscle, intestine, liver and reproductive organ) was analyzed by HPLC for the specimens of three species mentioned above collected from the Khanh Hoa coast in 2007. High variation was observed in the toxicity of the organs of each species. The reproductive organ and the liver showed the high- est toxicity, in terms of high average toxicity as well as large toxicity range: the toxicity of the reproductive organ of T. gloerfelti was 123.2�240.6 MU g �1 , n�30; that of the liver of T. oblongus was 171�239.3 MU g �1 , n�30. In addition, a significant level of toxin was often found in their muscle. Especially, the muscle of L. sceleratus often showed quite high toxicity (58.7�62.3 MU g �1 , n�12) which was dangerous for human consumption. 83% of the specimens of this species showed the toxicity higher than safety consumption level suggested in Japan (10 MU g �1 ). These results show that these puffer species are inappropriate for food because of the contamination of high level of toxin, though some nontoxic or weakly toxic specimens are included.