A man who drank too much iced tea

Iced tea can be medically dangerous, if consistently consumed copiously. A new study supplies evidence to that effect:

“A Case of Iced-Tea Nephropathy,” Fahd Syed, Alejandra Mena-Gutierrez and Umbar Ghaffar, New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 372, April 2, 2015, pp. 1377-1378. The authors, at Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, report:

“A 56-year-old man presented to the hospital in May 2014 with weakness, fatigue, body aches, and an elevated serum creatinine level (4.5 mg per deciliter [400 μmol per liter])…. He reported not consuming ethylene glycol…. On further questioning, the patient admitted to drinking sixteen 8-oz glasses of iced tea daily. Worsening renal failure with uremic symptoms necessitated the initiation of dialysis…. The case presented here was almost certainly due to excessive consumption of iced tea.”

Here’s visual detail from the study: