Traditional medicine is widely practiced in tropical countries. Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) fruit juice is advocated as a part of complementary and alternative medicine. If the bottle gourd juice becomes bitter it is considered toxic. We report 15 patients, who developed toxicity due to
BACKGROUND
Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) is an edible plant in the Cucurbitaceae family. When extremely bitter, ingestion of bottle gourd can cause rapid onset diarrhea, vomiting, gastrointestinal bleeding, and hypotension due to release of a substance named cucurbitacin.
OBJECTIVE
Our aim was
Reports from Australia of illness in consumers eating bitter squash prompted a 10-wk mouse-feeding study containing increased levels of the fruit of two cultivars of Cucurbita pepo , L., 'Blackjack' and 'Straightneck', and an accession of the bitter species, Cucurbita texana , Gray, was conducted.
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