Teen’s illness prompts tougher health warnings on green tea extracts
Health Canada has toughened warnings on green tea extracts, and a Cornwall teenager’s horrific experience a year-and-a-half ago was a significant part of the process.
Madeline Papineau, then 17, took the extract and soon after developed significant liver and kidney problems. Reactions like hers prompted a federal safety review, and Health Canada has ordered a more explicit warning on labels of green tea extract products — overthe-counter pills that have become a popular weight-loss option.
“When you see a product that’s supposed to be safe and ends up nearly killing your child, that doesn’t sit well,” said Julie Papineau, Madeline’s mom who has spent countless hours — many of them in contact with Health Canada — looking for answers and pushing for changes.
“It’s become my passion. I don’t want another family to go through what we went through.”
Madeline is now 18 and in her first year at Sheridan College in Toronto studying interior decorating.
In the spring of 2016, she was a 17-year-old looking forward to the prom at St. Joseph’s Secondary School. Looking to lose a bit of weight, she began taking Green Tea Triple Fat Burner, which she bought at Walmart. Within five days, she experienced severe reactions, including extreme vomiting, and checked into the Cornwall Community Hospital for two days before she was transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.
Madeline was able to put in a cameo appearance at the prom a few days later, “with dialysis tubes tucked inside her dress,” Julie says.
The Papineau story has been featured on CBC Marketplace, which discovered more than 60 cases worldwide, reported in peerreviewed journals, of liver failure associated with the weight-loss supplements and at least two deaths that have been partially linked to taking the pills.
The Health Canada review said it knew of 11 cases of suspected liver injury associated with green tea extract in Canada between 2006 and 2016, but that only two of the cases — including Papineau’s — had enough information to be fully assessed.
“The review, the changes, were made due to Madeline’s case,” Julie Papineau said. “But I stand by my position that this product should be recalled.”
Health Canada says the risk of liver injury has been noted on the labels of products containing green tea extract since 2008, but this month the agency said it would clarify the warnings by asking manufacturers to include stronger wording on the labels. The new wording will say: “Stop use if you develop symptoms of liver trouble such as yellowing of the skin/eyes ( jaundice), stomach pain, dark urine, sweating, nausea, unusual tiredness and/ or loss of appetite, and consult a health care practitioner.”
It also will warn that “rare, unpredictable cases of liver injury associated with green tea extract-containing products have been reported” in Canada and internationally.
Health Canada is also asking for there to be a specific warning for teens and children and that companies licensed to make natural health products containing green tea extract as a medicinal ingredient intended for children and adolescents to remove the green tea extract or change the label to specify the product is only intended for adults over age 18.
“You see the words ‘recommending’ and ‘asking,’ and I have a problem with that — to me it’s soft,” Julie Papineau said. “There needs to be (another) step that is more enforceable.”
Madeline missed 21 days of school that year and “it took months to recover (physically),” her mom said.
As for Madeline’s long-term prognosis, Julie thinks there’s some uncertainty.
Health Canada said in a news release that why some people may be more susceptible than others to liver injury remains unclear from the evidence. The Marketplace report noted green tea contains catechins, a type of antioxidant, and that concentrated green tea extracts contain catechins at significantly higher levels. An American gastroenterologist, Dr. Herbert Bonkovsky, told the show green tea extracts can be dangerous for some people at high doses.
Health Canada said green tea in any form — as a beverage, food or an extract in natural health products — “is considered generally safe for the majority of consumers.”