Do you like litchis? Well, prepare to be very, very careful before eating them the next time, at least on an empty stomach.
A joint study conducted by Indian and US scientists into hundreds of mysterious deaths in Bihar over the last two decades has found that the cause of death was none other than the litchi.
During the months of June and July, the region is bursting with fresh litchis. Children in the area often skip dinner and go to bed without meals, and spend their days eating litchies from orchards.
The researchers from NCDC and CDC studied about 390 children that had been admitted to the hospital in 2013 with the particular symptoms of this disorder. Out of them, 122 children died of the illness. Out of the total 390 children, 204 children had low blood sugar levels and most of them had eaten litchis on empty stomachs.
Almost 70 percent of Bihar's population is poverty-stricken, and the children who are identified with these symptoms usually come from poor families, Hindustan Times reported in 2015.