Top 13 Mold Toxicity Symptoms and Why They Happen
Fatigue.
Brain fog.
Insomnia.
Anxiety that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Foods, supplements, fragrances, or environments that suddenly bother you when they never did before.
Maybe your digestion has fallen apart. Your hormones seem completely different. You’re getting infection after infection. Your sleep is terrible, your brain doesn’t work the way it used to, and you’ve somehow collected five different diagnoses that still don’t explain why all of this started happening at once.
This is one of the reasons mold-related illness gets missed.
There usually isn’t one symptom that screams, “This is mold.”
The clue is often the pattern.
Mold-related illness can affect multiple systems at the same time. And when fatigue, cognitive changes, sinus problems, digestive issues, nervous system dysregulation, hormone changes, and increasing sensitivities start showing up together, especially after exposure to a water-damaged building, the environment deserves a much closer look.
I’m a naturopathic doctor specializing in mold illness and nervous system health, and I’ve worked with complex chronic illness for more than a decade.
I’ve also lived through long-term mold illness myself.
I know how confusing it is when your body starts doing things that seem completely unrelated.
Why Mold Toxicity Symptoms Can Look So Different From Person to Person
Every water damaged building is different.
Every building is growing different types of molds and bacteria, and those microbes are secreting different kinds of toxins.
Those substances don’t all affect the body the same way.
Some mycotoxins interfere with mitochondrial energy production. Others affect immune function, the nervous system, digestive tract, kidneys, or steroid hormones. Mold spores themselves can trigger allergic and inflammatory reactions.
That helps explain something I see all the time clinically:
Two people can be having a toxic mold exposure, but have different symptoms.
One develops asthma and eczema.
Another has sinus problems, exhaustion, and brain fog.
Someone else becomes incredibly reactive to foods and chemicals.
One person may barely seem affected while their spouse is struggling to function.
This is normal because each exposure is unique and each body is unique.
If you want to read about why some people are more susceptible to mycotoxin illness than others, I’ve written a blog on that specific topic.
One of the most important things to understand about mold illness is that it is a multi-system illness. That means, there are usually multiple symptoms in different body systems.
So rather than looking for one definitive mold symptom, I look for clusters.
Want to watch the rest instead of reading it?
Here’s a video I made to cover this topic.
1. Profound Fatigue
Fatigue is one of the most common mold toxicity symptoms I see.
And I’m not talking about needing another cup of coffee at three o’clock.
I mean waking up after eight or ten hours of sleep already exhausted.
Your muscles feel heavy.
Taking a shower feels disproportionately hard.
Tasks you once did without thinking require planning, pacing, and recovery.
At my worst during mold exposure, I could sleep 16 hours a day and still feel profoundly exhausted.
A recent systematic review found supportive evidence for an association between indoor dampness or mold exposure and fatigue, although the human evidence is still much smaller than the research on respiratory effects.
There are also plausible biological reasons for this.
Experimental studies show that certain mycotoxins can interfere with mitochondrial function and cellular energy production.
Your mitochondria produce the energy your cells need to do their jobs, whether it’s a brain cell that needs to make a neurotransmitter or a stomach cell that needs to make hydrochloric acid to digest your food.
When mitochondrial function is impaired, the consequences can include fatigue, weakness, poor exercise tolerance, and difficulty recovering after exertion.
Fatigue by itself tells us very little. Fatigue can be caused by many things.
Fatigue alongside several of the symptoms below tells me much more.
2. Brain Fog and Cognitive Changes
Brain fog often travels right alongside fatigue.
You may feel like there are cotton balls in your brain.
You read the same paragraph three times because your brain refuses to process it.
Like your brain is always exhausted and any mental work is too much.
You may struggle to find words.
Your short-term memory becomes unreliable.
You lose your train of thought halfway through a sentence.
Some people describe feeling unusually spacey, detached, or almost disconnected from their bodies.
The human research on mold and cognition is not as developed as I would like it to be, but experimental research has demonstrated neurotoxic and neuroinflammatory effects from multiple mycotoxins.
Mitochondrial dysfunction may contribute here too. Your brain uses an enormous amount of energy, so disrupted cellular energy production can show up cognitively as well as physically.
The environmental pattern can be particularly revealing.
Maybe your thinking clears significantly when you spend several days away from home.
Then the fog returns when you come back.
Or perhaps your concentration deteriorates every afternoon in one particular office and improves on the weekend.
Those patterns are worth paying attention to.
3. Insomnia, Even When You’re Completely Exhausted
This symptom can feel particularly cruel.
You’re exhausted all day.
Then bedtime comes and your body refuses to sleep.
Some people can’t fall asleep.
Others fall asleep but wake repeatedly.
Some wake around two or three in the morning feeling inexplicably alert or anxious.
Others live in that miserable state of feeling simultaneously wired and exhausted.
Every time I’ve had a significant long-term toxic mold exposure, insomnia has been one of my most severe symptoms.
At certain points, I was taking multiple sleep supports just trying to get enough rest to function. And my sleep reliably improved when the mold exposure ended.
I see the same pattern in many patients.
We don’t yet have strong human research proving that indoor mold exposure directly causes insomnia.
But consider how many pathways involved in sleep can be affected in mold-related illness:
neuroinflammation
histamine signaling
autonomic nervous system regulation
cortisol and other hormones
respiratory function
brain signaling
the psychological stress of being chronically ill
When several of those pathways become dysregulated at once, sleep can unravel quickly.
And poor sleep then makes almost everything else worse.
Fatigue.
Brain fog.
Mood.
Immune function.
Pain.
Blood sugar.
Hormones.
Nervous system regulation.
It becomes a feedback loop.
4. Anxiety, Depression, Irritability, and Nervous System Dysregulation
One of the most frightening things for my patients is often how intensely their mood is affected.
Someone who was never particularly anxious starts having panic attacks.
She becomes irritable in ways that feel completely unlike her.
Small stresses become overwhelming.
Her emotional bandwidth disappears.
Others develop depression, sometimes it’s severe.
Studies of people living in damp or mold-affected housing have found associations with anxiety, depression, stress, and poorer psychological wellbeing.
That does not automatically mean a mycotoxin directly caused someone’s depression.
Living in a sick home while dealing with frightening physical symptoms, financial strain, disrupted sleep, remediation decisions, medical uncertainty, and loss of normal life is incredibly stressful by itself.
But that is only part of the picture.
Experimental research also shows that some mycotoxins can trigger oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and changes in nervous system function.
And we know from the research that neuroinflammation has been linked to pretty much every mood disorder, including anxiety and depression.
On top of that, mold toxins and chronic illness itself can train the limbic and autonomic nervous systems to remain in a prolonged state of threat, which will alter mood too.
These mechanisms can coexist.
This matters because people with mold illness are often terrified that if they admit they are anxious, overwhelmed, or depressed, someone will conclude their physical illness was psychological all along.
I strongly disagree with that either-or framing.
Very real physical toxic and inflammatory effects can be happening at the same time that the nervous system becomes dysregulated by months or years of illness and stress.
In many people, those two processes start feeding into one another.
If this piece feels especially familiar, I’ve written more about how the trauma of chronic illness can impair physical healing.
5. New Sensitivities to Foods, Chemicals, Smells, Supplements, Light, or Sound
This pattern gets my attention quickly.
Someone who previously tolerated almost everything suddenly reacts to half the world.
Foods.
Supplements.
Perfumes.
Cleaning products.
Smoke.
Medications.
Musty environments.
Bright light.
Noise.
Sometimes electromagnetic fields or EMFs.
Increased reactivity is something I see repeatedly in people with complex mold-related illness.
There are several possible mold-induced contributors:
Histamine and mast-cell activation can increase reactions to foods, supplements, medications, environmental substances, and EMFs.
Inflammation can lower reaction thresholds.
And chronic limbic and autonomic nervous system activation, which mycotoxins can trigger, can make the brain increasingly vigilant toward stimuli that previously registered as safe or neutral.
I often see these sensitivities diminish substantially when both the mold illness and the nervous system dysregulation are addressed.
That is one reason I do not believe highly sensitive mold patients are well served by treating only one side of the equation.
6. Histamine Problems and Mast Cell Activation
Mold and mast cells have an important biological relationship.
Mast cells are immune cells concentrated in places where your body regularly encounters the outside world, including the respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, and skin.
There, they act as the first line immune system defenders against foreign invaders and toxins.
Mycotoxins and fungi can trigger mast cells through multiple immune pathways.
When mast-cell signaling becomes dysregulated, and histamine levels rise, symptoms may include:
flushing or itching
hives
congestion
rapid heart rate
food reactions
brain fog
agitation or anxiety
insomnia
sensitivity to supplements or medications
Some people ultimately receive a diagnosis of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, or MCAS.
I would not say that mold exposure has been proven to cause every case of MCAS.
What we can say is that fungal exposure, allergic immune activation, inflammatory signaling, and mast-cell biology intersect in meaningful ways.
Clinically, I find histamine and mast-cell symptoms extraordinarily common among the mold-illness population I work with.
That becomes especially important when histamine treatment helps somewhat but the symptoms always come back.
Mast Cell Activation and Histamine Issues are often just one downstream consequence of something else continuing to provoke the immune system.
7. Chronic Sinusitis and Year-Round Allergies
Respiratory and allergic effects are among the best-established health effects of indoor mold exposure.
A constantly stuffy or runny nose.
Sneezing.
Itchy or watery eyes.
Postnasal drip.
Persistent sinus pressure.
Throat clearing.
Headaches.
Migraines
Allergies that used to appear only during pollen season but somehow became a twelve-month problem.
These are patterns I take seriously.
The eyes and ears can get involved too.
Mold illness patients often report tinnitus, ear fullness, dry or irritated eyes, redness, itching, light sensitivity, or changes in vision.
There is also an interesting body of research around fungi, mycotoxins, and chronic sinus disease.
Fungi themselves are not enough to distinguish sick people from healthy ones because sensitive testing can find fungal organisms in the noses of both.
But Joseph Brewer and colleagues reviewed evidence suggesting a potentially important difference: mycotoxins have been detected in nasal secretions from mold-exposed, chronically ill patients, while the control group of healthy people had no detectable nasal mycotoxins.
Brewer and colleagues proposed that in at least some patients, toxin-producing fungi persisting in sino-nasal biofilms could be the cause of why the sick people had chronic sinus symptoms.
In someone with stubborn sinus problems plus a larger multisystem mold pattern, I think toxic mold exposure and fungal colonization deserve consideration.
8. Chronic Digestive Problems That Keep Coming Back
People often spend years treating their gut as though it were an isolated problem.
Bloating.
Reflux.
Constipation.
Diarrhea.
IBS.
Food intolerances.
Histamine reactions after eating.
SIBO that improves for six weeks and then comes roaring back.
SIFO or fungal overgrowth.
These can all be symptoms of toxic mold exposure.
There are several reasons mold and mycotoxins may affect digestive function.
Experimental research shows that certain mycotoxins can injure intestinal cells, interfere with the tight junctions that regulate intestinal permeability, disrupt the protective mucus layer and immune signaling, and significantly alter the gut microbiome.
There is also a fascinating nervous-system piece.
Your intestinal tract has its own enormous nervous system called the enteric nervous system, and it helps control digestion and motility.
Research shows that several mycotoxins can alter enteric nerve signaling.
One trichothecene called deoxynivalenol, or DON, has even been shown in rodents to change migrating motor complex activity and delay gastric emptying.
The migrating motor complex is one of the mechanisms your small intestine uses to sweep material forward between meals, so bacteria and fungi don’t ferment it and grow in the small intestine.
Poor motility is one of the major factors associated with recurrent SIBO.
If someone has chronic SIBO, IBS, or food intolerances and continually relapses after treatment while also dealing with brain fog, sinus problems, fatigue, insomnia, histamine issues, or increasing sensitivities, I start looking beyond the gut.
9. Mysterious, Stubborn Weight Gain
This one rarely appears on conventional lists of mold exposure symptoms.
I see it often enough that I pay attention to it.
Sudden, unexplained weight gain is something I see commonly in those with mold illness.
Diet and exercise don’t work to get it off. It’s persistent despite all the usual weight loss strategies.
There are several potential mechanisms related to toxic mold exposure:
Poor sleep alters glucose and appetite regulation.
Chronic stress signaling (which mycotoxins can cause) can affect cortisol, insulin sensitivity, and appetite.
High cortisol (which mycotoxins can cause) can lead to weight gain.
Inflammation can cause water retention.
Sex hormone and thyroid changes can alter metabolism.
In CIRS literature, altered leptin signaling and leptin resistance have also been proposed as contributors to difficulty mobilizing fat.
None of that makes weight gain a diagnostic sign of mold illness.
But if unexplained, stubborn weight gain began alongside a multisystem decline after a water-damaged-building exposure, it’s probably related.
10. Hormonal Imbalances
Hormones are another area where the broader symptom pattern matters.
In clinical practice, I commonly see mold-illness patients dealing with some combination of:
estrogen dominance
low progesterone,
low testosterone,
high or low cortisol patterns,
and symptoms of low thyroid function.
Experimental mycotoxin research gives us legitimate reasons to take these patterns seriously.
Estrogen and progesterone
Zearalenone, produced by some Fusarium mold species, is one of the clearest examples of a fungal endocrine disruptor.
Its structure allows it to interact strongly with estrogen receptors, and have an estrogenic effect in the body.
Experimental studies show that zearalenone and its metabolites can alter estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol production.
In women, excessive estrogenic signaling can contribute to heavier or more painful periods, breast tenderness, PMS, and other reproductive symptoms.
Testosterone
Mold toxins can lower testosterone substantially, in both women and men.
Low testosterone can contribute to lower libido, reduced muscle mass, poorer exercise recovery, fatigue, mood changes, cognitive symptoms, and changes in body composition.
Several mycotoxins interfere with testosterone production in experimental studies.
T-2 toxin directly reduced testosterone synthesis in mouse Leydig cells.
Citrinin suppressed testosterone production and reduced expression of several proteins required to make testosterone.
The broader reproductive-toxicology literature also describes disruption from aflatoxin B1 and other fungal toxins.
So, there is a plausible, experimentally demonstrated pathway through which certain fungal toxins can interfere with steroid hormone production.
Cortisol
Mycotoxins can either raise or lower cortisol levels depending on the toxin and the dose.
High cortisol tends to cause anxiety, insomnia or disturbed sleep, gaining abdominal weight, or running higher glucose.
Low cortisol tends to cause fatigue, needing excessive sleep, and sometimes low blood pressure (lightheadedness when standing)
Experimental studies mirror some of this complexity.
T-2 toxin and deoxynivalenol have demonstrated activation of stress-response pathways in animal models.
Enniatin B has directly reduced cortisol production in human adrenal cells.
Zearalenone can alter cortisol production in either direction depending on experimental concentration.
So, what we know is that certain mycotoxins can disrupt adrenal hormonal production and HPA-axis signaling (communication between the brain and adrenal glands).
Thyroid function
I also see low-thyroid patterns frequently in people with complex mold illness.
Low thyroid symptoms may include:
Feeling colder than everyone else.
Hair Loss
Constipation
Gain weight.
Fatigue
Often, the symptoms are all there even when thyroid bloodwork is normal. That’s because, it’s not always a thyroid hormone production issue. It’s whether that hormone can be used at the cellular level. Some mold toxins interfere with thyroid hormone utilization.
Several mycotoxins have demonstrated thyroid-disrupting effects experimentally.
Patulin lowered T4 and produced structural changes in the thyroid in an animal study.
Beauvericin, deoxynivalenol, and ochratoxin A have demonstrated antagonistic effects at the thyroid hormone receptor in cellular research.
So there is legitimate science behind the idea that fungal toxins can interfere with thyroid hormones as well.
11. Frequent or Chronic Infections
Another big clue is when someone suddenly seems to catch everything.
Every cold goes to their lungs.
They get recurrent sinus or ear infections.
Pneumonia.
UTIs.
Yeast infections.
Fungal skin or nail infections.
Or infections that their immune system previously kept quiet, but now are out of control and difficult to treat.
That may include viruses such as EBV, CMV, or HHV-6, or previously acquired tick-borne infections.
A number of mycotoxins are immunotoxic.
That means they can disrupt normal immune function and damage immune cells.
Depending on the toxin, dose, and duration of exposure, experimental studies have found toxic effects on macrophages, lymphocytes, antibody production, inflammatory pathways, and other parts of the immune response.
And the effect is not always simply “immune suppression.”
Some mycotoxins can provoke inflammatory immune activation at certain exposures while suppressing other immune functions at the same time.
One fungal metabolite is especially immunosuppressive.
Mycophenolic acid is produced by certain molds when they are actively growing.
A pharmaceutical derivative of mycophenolic acid is deliberately used in medicine to suppress immune function strongly enough to prevent rejection of transplanted organs.
This demonstrates that fungal metabolites can have powerful effects of the immune system that make someone more prone to infection.
For someone with frequent, recurrent, or chronic infections, it’s worth asking, what’s suppressing the immune system so much?
It may not be mold, but if other reasons have been ruled out, it’s really worth looking at mold toxicity.
And when chronic infections appear alongside the broader pattern in this article, mold-related immune disruption should come to the top of the differential list.
12. Frequent Urination and Excessive Thirst
This symptom often surprises people.
Mycotoxins can make people urinate more frequently and more volume, even if they haven’t changed their fluid intake.
Why?
In the experimental literature, certain mycotoxins can interfere with the kidneys’ ability to hold onto water normally.
A water channel called aquaporin-2 plays an important role in allowing the kidneys to reclaim water instead of losing it into the urine.
Citrinin, ochratoxin A, and T-2 toxin have been studied for effects on aquaporin-2 and the vasopressin receptor system that normally tells the kidney to conserve water.
Citrinin has also directly increased urine flow and free-water loss in animal experiments.
In plain English:
the kidney may let too much water pass through rather than concentrating the urine normally.
That could contribute to increased urination and thirst.
In people diagnosed with CIRS, abnormal regulation of antidiuretic hormone, or ADH, has also been proposed as another contributor to increased urination.
13. Frequent Static-Electric Shocks
This is the strangest symptom on my list.
I hear about it often enough from mold patients that I pay attention.
During both of my most significant mold exposures, I went through periods where I seemed to shock myself on objects constantly. Sometimes it happened 20 times a day.
We don’t know exactly why mold toxicity causes this, just that it happens.
There are plausible hypotheses.
Mycotoxins such as citrinin can affect urination and hydration, so increased water loss and drier skin could theoretically make static charge dissipate less readily.
Autonomic nervous system dysfunction can also alter sweating, and skin moisture strongly affects electrical conductance.
I would not use frequent static shocks alone to decide someone has mold illness.
But when someone reports an unusual increase in them alongside fatigue, brain fog, sinus problems, insomnia, sensitivities, digestive changes, or other symptoms on this list, I think mold.
The Most Important Mold Toxicity “Symptom” Is the Pattern
By now, you may be thinking:
I have half of this list.
That still does not tell you that mold is the cause.
Every symptom in this article can occur for reasons that have nothing to do with mold.
What makes mold more compelling is the combination of symptoms plus the timeline and environmental history.
I pay much more attention when someone tells me:
“My health started declining after we moved into this house.”
“Everything got worse after that roof leak.”
“I feel dramatically better when I’m away from my office.”
“My symptoms exploded after our basement flooded.”
“We renovated an old building, and several months later I stopped functioning normally.”
Or:
“I have diagnoses affecting five different systems, but no one has explained why they all started happening.”
That is where environmental medicine becomes detective work.
We are not trying to force every symptom into a mold diagnosis.
We are asking whether one environmental exposure could explain a meaningful portion of an otherwise confusing multisystem illness.
If Mold Is Part of the Picture, Treatment Has to Address More Than Mold
Identifying mold as a possible driver is only the beginning.
The answer is rarely to “detox harder.”
You still need to identify whether exposure is ongoing.
You need to understand which systems have actually been affected and if fungal colonization has occurred.
Some people need support for immune dysfunction.
Others need their digestive tract, hormones, mitochondria, nutrient status, infections, or other downstream consequences addressed.
And for many people, chronic illness has also left the nervous system locked into a state of threat and hypervigilance.
That deserves treatment too.
Not because the physical illness was psychological.
Because the body and nervous system influence one another constantly, and both may have been injured by the experience.
I’ve written more about that connection in The Nervous System’s Role in Mold Recovery
A more complete recovery strategy asks:
What’s still driving the illness? What was damaged downstream? And what does this particular person need in order to regain stability?
That is the work.
Could Mold Be Part of Your Health Picture?
If you recognized yourself in a surprising number of the symptoms above, take my Mold Illness Assessment Questionnaire.
TAKE THE MOLD ILLNESS ASSESSMENT →
It looks at both your symptoms and potential exposure history, and gives you a score for how likely it is that your symptoms are from mold toxicity.
It is an educational screening tool, not a diagnosis, but if your score is high, it’s worth taking the next step to pursue testing for mold toxicity.
And if you already know or strongly suspect that mold is part of your illness and you’re tired of trying to piece together the physical, hormonal, digestive, immune, and nervous-system pieces by yourself, you can learn more about how I work with mold illness patients here.
For patients in Oregon and Colorado, I offer telehealth naturopathic care for mold illness and complex chronic illness.
Research References
Dooley M, McMahon SW. Fatigue and exposure to mold and/or dampness: A systematic review of the literature from 2011–2018. Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology. 2025;40(3):e2025018. PMID: 41265402. DOI: 10.5620/eaht.2025018. Supports an association between damp/mold exposure and fatigue.
US Environmental Protection Agency. Can Mold Cause Health Problems? EPA summarizes established allergic and irritant effects of mold, including rhinitis-type symptoms, asthma exacerbation, eye irritation, skin symptoms, and respiratory irritation.
State-of-the-science and scoping reviews of damp/mold-affected housing and mental health. The literature reports associations between damp/mold housing and depression, anxiety, stress, and poorer psychological outcomes, while causal mechanisms remain difficult to separate from the broader burden of unhealthy housing.
Wang S, Wu K, Xue D, et al. Mechanism of deoxynivalenol mediated gastrointestinal toxicity: Insights from mitochondrial dysfunction. Food and Chemical Toxicology. 2021;153:112214. PMID: 33930483. DOI: 10.1016/j.fct.2021.112214. Reviews evidence that DON produces mitochondrial respiratory dysfunction and excess reactive oxygen species in intestinal cells.
Mishra S, Kapoor R, et al. Deoxynivalenol induces Drp-1-mediated mitochondrial dysfunction via elevating oxidative stress. Chemical Research in Toxicology. 2024;37(7):1139–1154. PMID: 38875017. DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrestox.4c00066. Provides newer experimental evidence for DON-induced mitochondrial dysfunction.
Brewer JH, Thrasher JD, Hooper D. Chronic illness associated with mold and mycotoxins: Is naso-sinus fungal biofilm the culprit? Toxins. 2014;6(1):66–80. PMID: 24368325. DOI: 10.3390/toxins6010066. Reviews fungal sinonasal biofilms and reports cases with mycotoxins detected in nasal secretions and tissues; proposes persistent toxin-producing sinus biofilms as a hypothesis in selected chronically ill patients.
Gonkowski S, Gajęcka M, Makowska K. Mycotoxins and the Enteric Nervous System. Toxins. 2020;12(7):461. PMID: 32707706. DOI: 10.3390/toxins12070461. Reviews evidence that mycotoxins including T-2 toxin and zearalenone can alter enteric neuronal signaling.
Fioramonti J, Dupuy C, Dupuy J, Bueno L. The mycotoxin deoxynivalenol delays gastric emptying through serotonin-3 receptors in rodents. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. 1993;266(3):1255–1260. PMID: 8371135. DON delayed gastric emptying and altered intestinal migrating motor complex activity through peripheral 5-HT3 signaling in rodents.
Yang J, Zhang Y, Jing A, et al. Effects of T-2 toxin on testosterone biosynthesis in mouse Leydig cells. Toxicology and Industrial Health. 2014;30(10):873–877. PMID: 23108506. DOI: 10.1177/0748233712464810. T-2 toxin directly reduced testosterone production in a dose-dependent fashion.
Liu S, Wang D, Zhang J, et al. Citrinin reduces testosterone secretion by inducing apoptosis in rat Leydig cells. Toxicology in Vitro. 2012;26(6):856–861. PMID: 22564900. DOI: 10.1016/j.tiv.2012.04.026. Citrinin reduced testosterone and suppressed StAR, P450scc, and 3β-HSD expression.
Kalayou S, Ndossi D, Frizzell C, et al. An investigation of the endocrine disrupting potential of enniatin B using in vitro bioassays. Toxicology Letters. 2015;233(2):84–94. PMID: 25625232. DOI: 10.1016/j.toxlet.2015.01.014. Enniatin B reduced cortisol, progesterone, and testosterone production and altered steroidogenic gene expression in human H295R adrenal cells.
Frizzell C, Ndossi D, Verhaegen S, et al. Endocrine disrupting effects of zearalenone, alpha- and beta-zearalenol at the level of nuclear receptor binding and steroidogenesis. Toxicology Letters. 2011;206(2):210–217. PMID: 21803136. DOI: 10.1016/j.toxlet.2011.07.015. Zearalenone and its metabolites demonstrated potent estrogenic activity and altered production of progesterone, estradiol, testosterone, and cortisol in adrenal-cell assays.
Selmanoğlu G, Koçkaya EA. Investigation of the effects of patulin on thyroid and testis, and hormone levels in growing male rats. Food and Chemical Toxicology. 2004;42(5):721–727. DOI: 10.1016/j.fct.2003.12.007. Patulin reduced serum T4 and produced histological thyroid changes in rats.
García-Herranz V, Valdehita A, Navas JM, Fernández-Cruz ML. Cytotoxicity against fish and mammalian cell lines and endocrine activity of the mycotoxins beauvericin, deoxynivalenol and ochratoxin-A. Food and Chemical Toxicology. 2019;127:288–297. PMID: 30716354. DOI: 10.1016/j.fct.2019.01.036. Beauvericin, DON, and OTA demonstrated antagonistic activity at thyroid hormone receptors in cellular assays.
Sun Y, Huang K, Long M, Yang S, Zhang Y. An update on immunotoxicity and mechanisms of action of six environmental mycotoxins. Food and Chemical Toxicology. 2022;163:112895. PMID: 35219766. DOI: 10.1016/j.fct.2022.112895. Reviews immunostimulatory and immunosuppressive effects of AFB1, OTA, DON, T-2, fumonisin B1, and zearalenone.
Maroli N, Jayakrishnan A, Manoharan RR, Kolandaivel P, Krishna K. Combined inhibitory effects of citrinin, ochratoxin-A, and T-2 toxin on aquaporin-2. Journal of Physical Chemistry B. 2019;123(27):5755–5768. PMID: 31204482. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.9b03829. Experimental work demonstrated interactions with AQP2 and the arginine vasopressin receptor system, reduced modeled water permeability, and altered renal AQP expression in exposed mice.
Medical Disclaimer
This article is for general educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease or replace individualized medical care. Mold-related symptoms overlap with many other medical conditions. New, severe, persistent, or concerning symptoms should be evaluated by an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
