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TUU SITTHIKORN
This summer, at least 47 children have died in an outbreak of a mysterious disease that only affects a lychee-producing area in northern India, CNN reported in June. The children had hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, and symptoms of acute encephalopathy syndrome, which leads to inflammation of the brain and results in fever and disorientation or delirium. Sometimes children may suffer seizures or slip into a coma.
Scientists propose that the illness is linked to a toxin found in lychees in combination with malnutrition. Other experts suspect the illness is caused by a pathogen that has yet to be discovered, calling the illness acute encephalitis syndrome instead. “Why we’re having so many cases of hypoglycemia needs investigation,” Sunil Kumar Shahi, the superintendent of Sri Krishna Hospital, told The New York Times earlier this summer. “But the lychee has no relation to it.” Researchers have been looking ...
