14 DAY TRIAL // In a paper published earlier this week in the journal BMJ Case Reports, Birmingham University Hospital medical experts describe a rather odd occurrence: a teenage girl developing hepatitis from drinking one too many cups of green tea.
Although hepatitis is usually the result of viral infections, some patients develop this condition when their liver is exposed to harmful substances such as alcohol or even certain medication. Autoimmune diseases can also trigger hepatitis.
In the case of this girl, however, it was green tea
The Birmingham University Hospital medical team explain that, when she first sought medical help, the 16-year-old girl was experiencing symptoms like stomach and joint pains, dizziness and nausea.
She was examined by a general practitioner who diagnosed her with an urinary infection and prescribed her antibiotics. After taking just two doses, however, the girl started feeling much worse.
When she was finally admitted at the Birmingham University Hospital, the 16-year-old girl was suffering from jaundice, meaning her skin and the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.
This time around, the teenager was diagnosed with hepatitis. Since there was no sign of a viral infection, doctors assumed that it must have been alcohol or some drug that had made her sick.
The girl denied drinking or taking any medication. She also told doctors that she had never had a blood transfusion, which is another way people can develop hepatitis. She did, however, confess to drinking quite a lot of green tea.
It wasn't just any kind of tea that she had been drinking
The brew that put the 16-year-old in the hospital was a Chinese concoction that the girl had ordered on the Internet and that she had been drinking hoping to lose weight.
“The patient admitted to ordering Chinese green tea over the Internet, and had been consuming over three cups a day over the preceding 3 months. When questioned as to why, she explained that she had been told it had weight-loss properties,” reads the case report.
The list of ingredients was in Chinese and so the girl didn't really know what was in it. It was medical experts at the Birmingham University Hospital who figured out the brew contained leaves and buds from a shrub called Camellia sinensis, and that this had caused her hepatitis.
Leaves and buds of Camellia sinensis are often used to brew tea. This time around, however, the plant proved harmful as it caused the girl's liver to become swollen up to the point that the inflammation resulted in hepatitis.
“With other causes of acute hepatitis excluded, and the complete clinical and biochemical resolution observed, green tea (Camellia sinensis) was proposed as the causative agent,” the specialists who treated her explain.
The 16-year-old girl was asked to stop drinking the tea and, a couple of months later, she made a full recovery. Her liver returned to its normal size and her symptoms disappeared.
Green tea is not all it's cut out to be, experts warn
Admittedly, green tea has antioxidant properties and so it qualifies as a healthy drink. Still, it's important that people check the exact ingredients of the tea they're drinking.
Apart from green tea leaves, some herbal remedies like the concoction that put this girl in the hospital contain extra ingredients that aren't exactly safe. In fact, researchers say that, in some cases, such brews can make people so sick they need a liver transplant.
“Green tea is predominantly a very safe and healthy drink, with antioxidant properties. It is the addition of other chemicals causing hepatotoxicity, particularly in preparations used for weight loss,” specialists write in the journal BMJ Case Reports.