A Case Study: Thalium Poisoning and Association with Nerve Shutdown

4 months ago

I was reading a story on The New York Times newspaper where a woman poisoned her husband because he was cheating on her, so in this post, I will be discussing a case of a person at the emergency department, and this time I will be assuming that he was poisoned because his wife caught him with a woman.

A person at the emergency complained about pain in his hands and feet which began at the early hours of the day and soon he began to lose feeling in his tongue, and face. Prior to this, in the past few months, he had been throwing up every food that his wife made for him, and although he would still be able to eat a few, he threw up most of the food. Also, he began to experience hair loss greater than what he would have normally.

The day he arrived at the hospital, he said that he started to feel his tingling in his hands and feet, and soon it looked like his hands and feet skin was going to peel off and this was when he decided to call for help which was how he got to the hospital. At the hospital, he didn't pass the ankle jerk reflex test. The patient's previous medical record shows that he had no medical issue.

This meant that he might be having peripheral neuropathy (peripheral referring to the outer parts of the nervous system, Neuropathy referring to the disturbance of the normal, vital process of the neuron). While neuropathy can happen over a period of weeks or months not having reflex isn't the same. Soon his eyelids began to droop, and his speech became slurry. This signaled that it was beginning to affect his brain but for this to be happening, it means there is something in his system causing this problem.

Trace of thallium sulfate was found in his blood stream. Thallium Sulfate is an old pesticide that was banned in the United States in the 1970s. Thallium is a heavy metal after mercury and before Lead. In the cell, thallium gets into the sodium potassium pumps instead of sodium being pumped into the cell. When thallium becomes excessive in the cell, the pump stops working. With this energy production is disturbed since instead of sodium and potassium, thallium is being pumped into the cell.

It was visible that he was being fed with thallium but to confirm this, Prussian Blue which is an artificially synthensized pigment of Iron and Cyanide needs to be given to him so as to help absorb the thallium in his blood, along side dialysis so the blood can be filtered. Although this was done, so many organs in the body had started shutting down because there was no energy to keep them working. The patient also suffered central nervous impairment and the patient went into a comatose state after which he became brain dead.