| India Today | - |
Outbreaks
of an acute neurological illness with high mortality among children
occur annually in Bihar's Muzaffarpur, country's largest litchi
cultivation region.
Mystery illness killing children in India caused by unripe lychee fruit
Killer fruit? Lychee cause of mysterious disease that plagued Indian town
India fights against malnutrition 02:48
Story highlights
- Fatal illness in children caused by missing a meal and lychee intake, says study
- There have been reports of the mystery disease in Bihar since 1995, says the report
(CNN)Every year since 1995, a mystery illness has plagued the town of Muzaffarpur in Bihar, India.
Around
May and June each year, large numbers of young children would start
showing signs of fever. They'd have seizures and convulsions, before
slipping in and out of consciousness.
In 2014, hundreds of children
were admitted to hospital exhibiting symptoms of this illness, branded
locally as "chamki ki bimari," or "tinsel disease." Of 390 admitted for
treatment, 122 died.
Teams of researchers and medical experts searched exhaustively to find the cause, but to no avail. Until now.
A new report, published in The Lancet Global Health
medical journal on Tuesday, claims to have discovered what's behind the
devastating disease: the unassuming lychee, otherwise known as litchi.
Heat,
humidity, malnourishment, the monsoon and pesticides have all been
considered at one stage to be contributing factors to the illness -- said to resemble encephalitis symptomatically, a disease that causes inflammation of the brain.
Killer fruit?
Researchers
from the US Centers for Disease Control and India's National Centre for
Disease Control compared test results of children who had developed the
mysterious illness, and children who had not.
Analysis of blood and spinal fluid samples showed no signs of infection or exposure to chemicals and insecticides.
However,
most of the children who had fallen ill had eaten lychee fruit
recently. They were also six times more likely to have visited a fruit
orchard in the last 24 hours, the study said.
A fruit vendor offers lychees to customers from his roadside stall in Amritsar, India.
Muzaffarpur, Bihar, is the largest lychee farming region in India.
According
to the study, parents reported that children in the affected villages
spent most of the day eating lychees from the surrounding orchards,
often returning home in the evening "uninterested in eating a meal."
The
results said that children who fell ill were twice as likely to have
skipped dinner, which, according to the researchers probably resulted in
"night-time hypoglycaemia."
When their blood sugar level dropped, the body would start to metabolize fatty acids to produce a necessary boost of glucose.
However,
urine samples showed that two-thirds of the ill children showed
evidence of exposure to toxins found in lychee seeds -- found in higher
levels in unripe fruits.
In the
presence of these toxins "glucose synthesis is severely impaired," the
study said, leading to dangerously low blood sugar and brain
inflammation in the children.
'Unidentified genetic differences'
The
Indian government issued a statement Wednesday advising children to
henceforth "minimize litchi fruit consumption" in affected areas, and
eat an evening meal during the "outbreak period."
However,
the researchers said there are still some questions surrounding the
mystery. For example, while orchards surround many villages in the area,
typically only one child in each village develops the illness. The
report suggests it may be something to do with genetics.
"The
synergistic combination of litchi consumption, a missed evening meal,
and other potential factors such as poor nutritional status, eating a
greater number of litchis, and as yet unidentified genetic differences
might be needed to produce this illness," the study said.
However,
it added that similar outbreaks had been reported in another lychee
cultivation areas in West Bengal, and also beyond India in parts of
Vietnam and Bangladesh.
Previous
research had focused on pesticides rather than the fruit itself, but
"the findings of our investigations might help to shed light on the
cause of illness in the Bangladesh and Vietnam outbreaks," the study
said.
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