The delicious litchi fruit has been the subject of two global scientific studies this year. While consumption of the fruit has been shown to be the reason behind the mysterious deaths of children in litchi orchards in India by one study, another study concludes that the fruit was not the cause of death among children in orchards in Bangladesh.

An Indo-US collaborative study published early in 2017 in Lancet Global Health concluded that eating litchi (which contained some naturally occurring toxins) was the reason behind the mystery disease that killed nearly 125 children in orchards in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, during 2014.

A more recent study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in the last week of July found that it could be pesticides that killed over a dozen children working in litchi orchards in neighbouring Bangladesh in 2012.

Interestingly, the tropical fruit, that is exported and is widely used in ice-creams and fruit salads, is grown in several North and East Indian states. The soil conditions in Bihar and Bangladesh are reasonably similar.

For several years the incidence of children's deaths or episodes of brain fever and other complications were reported in Muzaffarpur in Bihar, which is the largest region growing the fruit in India. It remained a mystery even as several children died of complications.

Bangladesh findings:

According to the study done by the International Center for Diarrhoel Disease Research , the use of a variety of pesticides, including the banned endosulfan since 2011, may be the cause for the brain damage among the children and deaths.

It relied on extensive interactions and information gathered from families working in litchi orchards to conclude that most of the kids affected had eaten "unwashed fruits, often peeling the skin with their teeth". In June 2012, 14 kids were brought to the Dinajpur Medical College hospital with severe encephalitis. Of the 14, 13 died within a day.

"Eating litchi is not linked with the illness in the case control study. The outbreak of the tragedy was on account of the exposure of the children to the variety of agrochemicals in the fields", the study concluded. The authors made a reference to the Lancet Global study of Muzaffarpur as well.

Indo-US study findings:

In January 2017, the Indo-US research team concluded that the children in Muzaffarpur died or suffered complications because of the toxins in the fruit they ate , thus claiming to have solved a mystery that has persisted since 2012.

Investigating the unexplained illness gripping children below 15, the researchers found that the practice of eating the litchi fruit and then skipping the evening meal was the cause of the problem. It led to a sudden fall in blood glucose levels, causing bouts of seziures, coma and sometimes death.

The study was done by scientists from the National Centre for Disease Control, Delhi and the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta. The researchers had studied 390 patients admitted to the two referral hospitals in Muzaffarpur between May 26 to July 17, 2014 with symptoms of acute encephalitis.

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