PUNE: A healthy 41-year-old woman with no underlying medical condition recently died in the city after consuming bottle gourd juice, reinforcing the need to exercise caution while having fluid of vegetables.“She developed severe vomiting and loose motion within half-an-hour of having a glass of bottle gourd juice in the morning on June 12. Her condition worsened very fast over the next three days. She succumbed to complications around midnight on June 16,” said a family friend.Several cases of health complications and death following consumption of bottle gourd juice have been reported in the country.An expert committee formed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in 2011 had ruled that people should not drink bottle gourd juice if it tasted bitter. The bitter bottle gourd contains compounds that may cause complications and even death.After running for 5km in the morning on June 12, the deceased woman had bottle gourd juice at 9.30am — her daily routine — before leaving for office. “She vomited in the car on the way to her office and had to return home immediately. Later, she had severe loose motion,” he said.She also developed breathlessness, pain in abdomen and had an episode of convulsion. She was rushed to a private hospital in Baner around 1.30pm. “By the time she was moved there, she had lost consciousness and had a cardiac arrest,” he said.The woman was on ventilator support for two days during the treatment.“Her condition had started improving. But on Friday (June 15), she developed bleeding in the brain. The bleeding was promptly taken care of. But she again developed bleeding in the brain and this time, she could not be revived. She succumbed to multiple complications, including vital organ dysfunctions, on June 16,” he said.A working professional, the woman was a fitness enthusiast. She would do physical exercises, and practice cycling and running regularly.Critical care expert Kapil Borawake said, “It is not the lone case of bottle gourd poisoning in the city. I see around one or two such cases almost every year. Quite a few people take this particular vegetable’s juice in Pune. People should not consume the juice if it tastes bitter. The awareness about this is very low among people.”Bottle gourd poisoning poses a diagnostic dilemma before treating doctors. “It is often confused with gastrointestinal sepsis . The treatment is mainly supportive and symptomatic. There is no antidote for this type of poisoning,” he said.Borawake has seen quite a few patients with bottle gourd poisoning in the past few years. “I treated the first patient at Prayag Hospital in 2011. He was a middle-aged man, who had undergone angioplasty . I had sent samples of the bottle gourd juice that he had drank to Kochi-based Amruta Institute of Medical Sciences for toxicological study. The sample had tested positive for Cucurbitacin, a poisonous compound often seen in the bitter bottle gourd,” Borawake said.Senior general practitioner Avinash Bhondwe said, “Vegetable juice vendors are often seen making brisk business outside public gardens in Pune. There is no check on how they function.”