US construction worker dies after eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

An American man has died after eating too much liquorice, according to his doctors.

The unnamed construction worker ate around one and a half bags of liquorice a day, and had suffered no symptoms before going into cardiac arrest at a fast food restaurant.

The 54-year-old’s doctors say the confectionery was to blame because of the glycyrrhizic acid it contains.

“We are told that this patient has a poor diet and eats a lot of candy,” Doctor Elazer R. Edelman told the New England Journal of Medicine. “Could his illness be related to candy consumption?”

Researchers have found that glycyrrhizic acid can cause “hypertension, hypokalemia, metabolic alkalosis, fatal arrhythmias, and renal failure”, according to the journal.

These “signs and symptoms” were seen in the patient, it added.

Dr Elazer’s final diagnosis of the man’s cause of death was “metabolic, renal, vascular, and cardiac toxic effects from apparent mineralocorticoid excess due to licorice consumption”.

If a patient presents with hypokalemia, their blood's potassium levels are too low. Potassium is a vital mineral, especially important for the cells in a person’s heart, and helps to keep blood pressure from getting too high.

Another contributor to the study, Dr Andrew L. Lundquist, agreed that liquorice had caused the man’s death.

“Although this patient’s elevated free cortisol level in the spot urine sample could be consistent with several of these possibilities, his age at presentation and his previously normal potassium levels do not support an inherited syndrome,” he said.

“Further investigation revealed a recent change to a licorice-containing candy as the likely cause of his hypokalemia.”