A case of food poisoning due to ingestion of Eggplant, Solanum melongena, grafted on Devil's trumpet, Datura metel

Abstract

A husband and wife successively visited an emergency room with symptoms of staggering, slurred speech, mydriasis, and drowsiness, three hours after separately eating spaghetti with meat sauce. The sauce contained eggplant that had been grafted onto a Devil's trumpet, Datura metel. Scopolamine and atropine were detected in the leftover sauce and in the sera of the patients. This is the first case of food poisoning related to Datura in Okinawa, Japan and also might be the first report of food poisoning caused by intake of a vegetable grafted onto Datura in Japan.