Pune woman dies after consuming bottle gourd juice

She was then moved to the nearest hospital by the afternoon. She had already lost consciousness and had suffered a cardiac arrest. She had to be put on ventilator which helped her conditions improve.

Pune: A woman in Pune lost her life after drinking poisonous bottle gourd juice. The 41-year-old had a glass of bottle gourd juice after coming from her routine jog on June 12. Her conditions worsened within half-an-hour where she experienced severe vomiting and loose motions; after which she eventually developed breathlessness, pain in the abdomen and a seizure. She was then moved to the nearest hospital by the afternoon. She had already lost consciousness and had suffered a cardiac arrest. She had to be put on ventilator which helped her conditions improve. The woman’s condition became critical again as her brain started bleeding. Later, she developed multiple complications and her vital organs failed and that’s when she succumbed to it on June 16. The issue with such a poisoning is that it is confused with gastrointestinal sepsis and there is no antidote for a case. Bitter bottle gourd contains a compound called Cucurbitacin which is responsible for such incidents. A simple check against it is, if the bottle gourd tastes bitter, do not drink it as it is high on Cucurbitacin.