The toxicosis of Embellisia fungi from locoweed (Oxytropis lambertii) is similar to

locoweed toxicosis in rats

Introduction
Locoweed is plant that is desirable to animals such as horses, cattle and sheep. When
eaten it causes a chronic disease that affects the neurons in the brain. The effects of this disease
on the animals can cause depression, weakness, inability to eat or drink and sometimes abortion.
This plant is found across North America where farm animals continue to consume it resulting in
the loss of animals and money to the farmers since they can no longer profit from the sick cattle
anymore.
To help the farmers out, scientists have been trying to find a solution to this problem
since 1990 so that locoweed will stop harming the animals and at the same time prevent any
more economic loss to the farmers as well. The researchers are trying to gather information on
whether a certain content in the locoweed is causing the locoism in animals. They found out that
the Fungi Embellisia sp., located in the Locoweed could be the one to bring about the disease.
They hypothesized that the fungi Embellisia sp. is the one causing locoism in the animals.
Materials and Methods
To start off their studies they took 24 rats and separated them into three different groups
and prepared different diets for each of them. The first diet was of only locoweed, the second diet
was of the fungi, and the third diet was the control. The rats were free to drink as much as they
liked for one hour of the day for 24 days. Throughout the experiment, the scientists weighed the
rats and measured how much food they consumed and how much they left. After the time frame
was over, the rats were killed and their organs were observed. They tested to see how much
swainsonine (fungi produced from Embellisia) was present in the locoweed and fungal parts of

the diet by examining the blood sera of the rats using a modified -mannosidase enzyme assay.
Through the tests they found out that the levels of swainsonine in plant and in fungus were pretty
much the same based on the rats weight.
Results
It turned out that the rats in the locoweed diet and the fungus diet weighed less than the
control group. Yet between the locoweed fed rats and the fungus fed rats there was not that much
of a difference. The results showed that they both consumed about the same amount of
swainsonine as well. Both groups of rats also showed symptoms of trembling and being jittery
when they were weighed, while the rats in the control group seemed just fine. However, despite
these minor differences, there were no other major ones which were surprising.
Discussion
Although the differences were minor between the fungus fed and locoweed fed rats, the
scientists stated that, [t]he fungus-fed rats displayed symptoms of poisoning that were
indistinguishable from those of the locoweed-fed rats (McLain-Romero et al. 2174). This means
that the fungi, Embellisia is most likely the main cause for the poison in the locoweed plant even
though it cant be distinguished very clearly what they are. The researchers gathered enough data
to conclude that the activity of the toxic fungi within locoweeds partially or wholly causes the
locoweed toxicity (McLain-Romero et al. 2174).
Through this experiment there were a few limitations to the study. For one, the scientists couldnt
differentiate the exact side effects of poison from the rats who ate fungi and the rats who ate
locoweed. They also had implications when measuring how much swainsonine was in the blood
of the rats. Since swainsonine is so quickly ridden out of the blood, the scientists had to measure
the half-life of it to know how much of it was in the blood.

Bibliography
J. McLain-Romero, R. Creamer, H. Zepeda, J. Strickland, and G. Bell. The Toxicosis Fungi
From Locoweed (Oxytropis lambertii) Is Similar To Locoweed Toxicosis In Rats.
Journal of Animal Science 2004. 82:2169-2174
Stegelmeier, B.L., James, L.F., Panter, K.E., Ralphs, M.H., Gardner, D.R., Molyneux, R.J. and
Pfister, J.A. The pathogenesis and toxicokinetics of locoweed (Astragalus and Oxytropis
spp.) poisoning in livestock. J. Nat. Toxins 8(1):35-45. 1999.