Thaís Medeiros de Oliveira: During lunch, a young woman put a jar of pickled pepper to her nose and, shortly followingwards, suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest, had a cerebral edema and was hospitalized in serious condition. Despite the medical prognosis, the mother says she will continue to fight for her daughter’s full recovery
Thais Medeiros de Oliveira
Thaís Medeiros de Oliveira, 25, has been hospitalized in serious condition since February 17 at Santa Casa de Anápolis (GO). The young woman had a strong allergic reaction following smelling a pepper.
Doctors think that the young woman’s contact with the pepper was a trigger for her to trigger a severe asthma attack, causing Thaís not to be able to breathe normally. This led to low oxygen circulation to the brain and heart, which caused a cardiorespiratory arrest in the young woman.
Thais felt sick while having lunch at her boyfriend’s house, and spent more than 20 days in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). She sniffed a jar of pickled pepper. “She arrived already intubated. We can say that it was an important time [de receber atendimento médico]because her current clinical situation shows, due to the difficulty in oxygenating her brain, that she still has a very compromised neurological condition”, says physician Murilo Carlos Santana.
According to Santa Casa de Anápolis, the young woman had a cerebral edema. The boyfriend reported on social media that the young woman left the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) last Friday (10), reaffirmed that Thais is not at risk of brain death and that she has few stimuli.
“We expect a serious neurological injury. There may be a recovery, but we believe that returning to her usual, normal activities, that, unfortunately, is not possible”, says Rubens Dias, head of the ICU at Santa Casa.
The young woman’s mother vented regarding not losing hope in her daughter’s recovery and told regarding the recurrent allergic crises that the young woman had. “When I went to the hospital, she tried very hard, opened her eyes and squeezed my hand. I said: – Thais, go back to mom, and her tears fell. I don’t have anything to do, just pray and trust the father. I want my girl back. I will not give up on her”, said Adriana Medeiros.
Adriana says that her daughter had bronchitis and asthma and suffered from allergic crises, including spending five days in the hospital with bacteria in her lungs.
“Thais contracted asthma and bronchitis at the end of her pregnancy, and since then, I’ve been fighting with her. She’s allergic to a lot of things, but we still didn’t know. We were going to start a treatment with her at the Hospital das Clínicas in Goiânia, but, for financial reasons, we were unable to continue. She said: – no, mom, we’ll do it later”, says the mother.
Adriana explains that Thais’ crises started with shortness of breath, coughing, full lungs and blistering of the body, however, she had never registered a reaction to pepper, which surprised everyone. “She ate pepper at home, we used to eat it, and she never had a problem. As she was already short of breath, she sniffed the pepper and closed her glottis”.
What Science Says
Thais’ case is quite rare in medicine. According to the Santa Casa de Anápolis, there was an improvement in his respiratory and infectious conditions, in his blood pressure and in the picture of cerebral edema, which is the accumulation of liquid in the region.
“Unfortunately, she was the victim of a combination of several factors that led to a severe asthma attack,” says Helton Santiago, professor of Immunology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
He says that the reaction to an allergen (the substance that triggers the allergic process) often manifests itself intensely in the first reaction. “In this case, there is the possibility that she developed an allergy to pepper without knowing it, which is rare to happen, or that she has an allergy to another substance that has cross-reactivity once morest a component of pepper”.
Cross-reactivity occurs when the body’s immune system interprets the proteins of two different substances as similar and triggers the reaction that appears in the form of allergic symptoms. That is, there is even a possibility that Thais are not specifically allergic to pepper.
A study published last year by scientists from institutions in France and Japan analyzed the case of a 16-year-old Japanese patient who was allergic to pollen and fruit and who suffered an anaphylactic reaction — a state of shock in the body that causes severe and potentially fatal symptoms — following consuming pepper.
What triggered Thais’ serious condition was canned goat pepper (Capsicum chinense), popular in the Midwest of the country and quite present in Goiás dishes.
Claudia Silva, an Embrapa technician, says that this variety has considerable heat and estimates a level between 120,000 and 190,000 on the Scoville scale (which varies from 2,000 to 2,000,000).
The burning sensation in peppers, which can evolve into coughing, sneezing and tears, is caused by capsaicin, the main component of the plant. “Capsaicin can sensitize receptors in the nasal epithelium and cause irritation”, says Danielle de Lima Ávila, nutritionist and PhD in Biochemistry from UFMG.
Helton Santiago says that the substance has the ability to bind to certain mast cell receptors, immune cells responsible for stimulating the clinical manifestations of allergy.
“In this way, if a person inhales pepper, even if they are not allergic, they may experience symptoms similar to asthma. If the exposure is intense, even oral consumption or inhalation can trigger a reaction so strong that it seems to be an anaphylactic condition”, explains the professor of immunology.
But he draws special attention to the dangers of asthma. A Brazilian dies from asthma approximately every 4 hours, according to data from the Ministry of Health from 2018 to 2020. “It is worth remembering that asthma is a serious disease and that it has a significant mortality rate in the world. Therefore, an asthmatic person should properly monitor their condition with a pulmonologist or an allergist,” says Santiago.
