Research Progress on the Establishment of Animal Models of Amanita Toxin Poisoning

Amatoxin is the primary lethal component of highly toxic Amanita species, inducing severe liver failure or even multiple organ failure, with no specific clinical treatments available. Establishing amatoxin poisoning animal models is critical for studying its toxicological mechanisms, developing new therapies, and supporting forensic practice (e.g., aiding dose inference, postmortem pathological interpretation, and judicial authentication in poisoning cases). This review summarizes progress in building amatoxin poisoning animal models: Toxicological models, primarily using mice via intraperitoneal injection, focus on exploring mechanisms such as inflammation and autophagy; pharmacokinetic models (e.g., rats and beagles) clarify toxin excretion (via urine) and enterohepatic circulation (providing references for determining toxin detection time windows in forensic testing); drug treatment models verify efficacy of agents such as silibinin and resveratrol, with doses optimized by LD 50. The current models suffer from a lack of standardization. Future efforts should further optimize the models to better simulate human poisoning characteristics, thereby better supporting amatoxin-related research, the development of new drugs, and forensic practice.