Japan warns kidney patients over wild mushrooms after four die

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2004

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan warned people with kidney problems to stay away from a variety of wild mushroom after at least four patients who ate it came down with fever and died.

The health ministry has asked regional governments to issue warnings about angel wings, a small white mushroom, as research is conducted about potential dangers, Kyodo News said.

Officials said earlier that 11 people with kidney trouble fell ill and three of them died in Niigata Prefecture, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) northeast of Tokyo, two weeks after eating the mushroom, called sugihiratake in Japanese.

"It is a type of mushroom that people usually eat around here and is said not to be poisonous, but the link is that they all ate the mushroom," Niigata health official Kazuo Ishigami...