Areca nuts can have deleterious effects

BMJ 1999;318:1287 ( 8 May )

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Areca nuts can have deleterious effects

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EDITOR $---$ The United States nurses' study¹ and the editorial that accompanies it report some health benefits of eating severalhelpings of nuts a week. These benefits cannot be generalisedto all nuts commonly consumed, and it is important to specifywhich nuts conferthem.

The areca nut (erroneously referred to as the betel nut) is chewed by over 200 million people worldwide $---$ a tenth of the world'spopulation. It is chewed either alone or as part of a quid knownas "pan." This habit is practised commonly in central, southern,and southeast Asia and is now also emerging in Western countries.Recently new information on medical, biochemical, and psychologicalcorrelates of use of areca nuts have been reported.² Severaldeleterious effects on oral and general health are now linkedto use of the nuts. The consumption of areca has been stronglylinked to the development of oral submucous fibrosis (a . . . [Full text of this article]

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