By Paul Kennedy, The Associated Press – The World Health Organisation has found a link between Parsley and a cluster of rare lung diseases in India.
The findings of the latest WHO study, which was released Monday, highlight the urgent need for more research into the potential link between the popular Indian leafy green and serious diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung condition that can lead to chronic obstructives.WHO said the study found that the common strain of Parsley was more than twice as common in India than the strain in the U.S. and that it has a significantly higher risk of causing serious illness in children.
The finding was based on data from 1,619 children in 11 states and territories in India and China.
It also found that a cluster in one state was associated with a cluster that occurred in 10 other states.WHO’s health director, Dr. Margaret Chan, said the findings could not be used to draw conclusions about the risk of Parsleys as a whole, but that the clusters could point to specific individuals or clusters that need to be investigated further.
“I think it’s important to be careful about drawing conclusions about this particular strain of the plant, because there’s so much we don’t know,” Chan told reporters at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
“It’s one of the rare and important vegetables that people in the developing world don’t eat.”
Chan said that the cluster in China had been linked to other cases of rare coronavirus in a group of children in a school, while the cluster linked to India in China was linked to a cluster linked in a community in the northeast of India.
“There’s no way of knowing if it’s the same strain, or whether it’s a different strain,” Chan said.
“The findings are certainly very important, but they also indicate that we need to have a lot more research.”
In the U., the United States has a high rate of Parsly poisoning and is one of just a handful of countries where Parsley is banned in some forms, such as on school property.
Chan said the new findings were “particularly concerning” because of the link between childhood and adult health.
She said it was not yet known if Parsley had been implicated in the coronaviral pandemic in China, but she said the WHO “continues to support the development of a vaccine.”
The study is the first to identify a causal link between a single strain of a common strain and the emergence of several severe respiratory conditions in Indian children.
“In the past, we’ve known that certain strains of a plant are associated with respiratory diseases, and so we thought, well, maybe this is a new one,” Chan explained.
“But in this case, it’s quite clear that there is a causal relationship between the strain of this plant and a number of respiratory diseases.”
The WHO said that it was encouraging India to continue to develop its control measures to protect its children from the virus and to ensure its food supply, and urged its governments to improve access to clean water.
“To ensure the health and well-being of the children, we strongly urge the government of India to ensure that access to fresh, clean drinking water is available,” Chan added.
