Girl got hepatitis by drinking green tea

IT has been credited with a host of health benefits, from cutting cholesterol to combating cancer.

But doctors have expressed fears over the safety of green tea after a teenage girl developed hepatitis due to drinking it.

The 16-year-old was having three cups of Chinese green tea a day when she started experiencing excruciating abdominal pains and nausea.

She was admitted to A&E with a suspected swollen liver and after tests doctors eventually linked the illness to her tea habit, identifying green tea as a ‘causative agent’.

When the schoolgirl ditched the imported tea – which she bought online and had been drinking for three months in a bid to l ose weight – she returned to full health.

The case prompts concerns about effects of green tea, which has been used in tradi- tional Chinese medicine for hundreds of years.

It has gained its healthy reputation due to the high number of antioxidants it contains, and is said to encourage weight loss and reduce dementia risk. But the report in the British Medical Journal said that although the girl’s severe reaction was ‘rare’, illness associated with herbal tea consumption is a ‘recurring theme’.

Report author Dr Sebastian Thomas Lugg, a researcher at the University of Birmingham, added: ‘Hepatotoxicity [liver damage] has been widely related to green tea.’ He warned that while most herbal drinks are safe, buying them online could leave customers exposed to unregulated products.

The unnamed girl, originally from Yemen but living in Britain, said most of the ingredients written on the tea’s packaging were in Chinese. Doctors suggested her illness may have been caused by chemicals added to the tea to encourage weight loss or pesticides used in the tea-growing process.