A mysterious illness has afflicted hundreds of kids in India every summer with a deadly brain disease that has now been solved, researchers say.
According to a new report, the cause of the illness was found in lychee fruit, which is grown widely in orchards in the city of Muzaffarpur, where the outbreak started. Censoriously, the victims who got sick commonly ate the fruit on an empty stomach, in which during digestion, contributed to the onset of the illness, researchers said.
The Countryside Of Muzaffarpur Suffer This Illness During Summer Harvest Season,
Since the year 1995, there have been lots of reports of children in Muzaffarpur suddenly dwindling ill and having seizures, which usually starts early morning, according to The New York Times. Often these children would end up in a coma, and approximately 40 percent of them died, Times said. Outbreaks usually begin in mid-May and end in July, around the same time that lychees are harvested.
Despite many earlier studies, researchers still struggle to confirm what chemical compound causes these illnesses. In the new study, the researchers analyzed nearly 400 cases of children who developed this mysterious brain illness since 2014, and compared them to about 100 children who didn't get ill after eating the fruit.
A Chemical Compound That Reacts After Eating With Empty Stomach
They gathered blood and spinal fluid samples from the children with the brain illness showing that the children did not have indicators of an infection, nor were they exposed to pesticides. What's more, the study of urine samples showed that two-thirds of the sick children had an indication of exposure to two toxins found in lychee seeds called Hypoglycin and Methylenecyclopropyl glycine. These toxins are found in an unripe fruit. Researchers suspect that another factor was involved: eating the fruit on an empty stomach.
Results showed that children who developed the brain illness were twice as likely to have skipped their dinner, compared to those who didn't develop the illness. Many of the sick children had very low blood sugar levels and other signs of problems with their metabolism.
The researchers said that when children skipped dinner, their blood sugar levels dropped. When this occurs, chances are, it would normally start to break down fatty acids to produce glucose. But the two toxins that are found in lychees prevent the creation of fatty acids, leading to tremendously low blood sugar levels and trigger brain inflammation in children, researchers said.
"Although lychees are abundant in the orchards surrounding the villages in the countryside of Muzaffarpur, typically only one child in the entire village develops this acute illness," the researchers wrote in the Jan. 30 issue of the journal the Lancet Global Health. "The synergistic combination of lychee consumption, a missed dinner, and other potential factors such as poor nutritional growth" and eating a greater number of lychees could start the illness, they said.
After thorough investigation, the researchers suggested that children in the region limits their consumption of lychees, and that parents make sure their children eat dinner, to prevent more cases about this illness every summer.
