Abstract
Poisonous puffer roe has been processed for use as a food by pickling in rice-bran in Ishikawa Prefecture, However, the amount of poison in some of the products was higher than 10MU/g, the value established as the safety limit by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1954. Therefore, it was necessary to reduce the amount of poison in the pickled roe. In the course of studies to improve the manufacturing process, the extract-ability of puffer poison by three methods (with 0.1% acetic acid, methanol acidified to pH 4.0 with acetic acid, and water) and the effect of sodium chloride in tetrodotoxin solution on the death time of mice were examined. Moreover, the toxicity of spoiled puffer roe and its extract was tested, as Migita and Hashimoto had reported that toxicity of puffer roe extract was decreased when the roe had become spoiled. The following results were obtained:
1) Among the three methods, water extraction was found to be the most efficient.
2) When tetrodotoxin solution containing sodium chloride was injected intraperitone-ally into mice, their death time was increasingly prolonged as the salt concentration was increased.
3) No clear relation between the toxicity and the spoilage of puffer roe (or its extract) was found in this study.
