Talk:Lytico-bodig disease

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Two thoughts, did anyone check if the ashland.edu wiki's license is compatible with wikipedia? I looked briefly and couldn't find anything about a license on their wiki. Also, assuming we're good to use their content, if our article is a clone of theirs, does it really add anything to list them in the external references section?


 * A third thing; the content is not very encyclopedic. "A bit tricky"? =) --PaulWicks (talk) 20:20, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I recall a documentary about "Guam Disease", which seems to be the same as Lytico-Bodig disease, which said the cause had been found. As I recall, the disease occurred in three places, caused in one place by improperly prepared seeds used as food, in another by the seeds (or other part of the same plant) being used as a healing poultice on open wounds, and in Japan the seed was used in traditional medicine. The mechanism described was of an excitotoxin which caused neurons to fire continuously until they died of exhaustion, at which point the toxin was released to poison other neurons. Because the toxin stayed in the system doing progressive damage, it only required occasional or even one-time exposure, so need not show up in small scale random sampling of the flour. I don't have references for this, so can't include it in the main article, but hope this tidbit of info may be of use. --Ausvirgo (talk) 06:09, 22 April 2011 (UTC)