hyderabad with dehydration and heatinduced illnesses on the rise there is a spurt in cases of patients wrongly consuming energy drinks instead of ors oral rehydration salts and landing at hospitals drinks which partly have ors in its label but are not world health organization recommended ors formula are leading to worsening of symptoms confusing and misleading patients as these are high on sugar contentamong the recent victims of nonwho formula ors is 51yearold ravi who had consumed two tetra packs of misleadingly named energy drink on the first day after consulting a general physician i was asked to take two ors on day one and another on day two after i took the first two tetra packs my condition worsened i had to rush to the doctor again it was then that the doctor asked me about what i had taken and alerted me that it was an energy drink and not ors ravi revealedin fact when toi visited three pharmacies in chandanagar and hitec city for ors the first thing handed out by pharmacists was a tetra pack an energy drink and two of the pharmacies did not even have ors at all drugs controller general of india approves only those formulations containing who recommended formula any ors must conform to the standards prescribed in respect of manufacture package and labelling dr sivaranjani santosh a paediatrician saidfalse labelling is prohibited and is an offence under the drugs and cosmetics act however some companies are mislabelling their energy drinks as ors or something similar qrs getting permission from fssai and selling them in market these tetra packs are displayed prominently at most pharmacies he said adding the high sugar content in these drinks worsen diarrhoea they inadequately replace salt content in the body and thus increase severity of diarrhoea vomiting and related complications like dehydration shock and deaththe tetra packs on the other hand mention in small font electrolyte drink not an ors or not recommended to be consumed for diarrhoea these warning are often missed by patients the different formulations of flavoured and nonwho formula ors peak rehydration salts however have flooded the market adding to the confusionpatients take these without reading the label the amount of salts that have to be reintroduced into the body have to be done in proportion of loss of fluids excessive electrolytes and sugar can be life threatening for certain patients said dr sanjeev singh yadav general physician citing the case of a diabetes patient the patient didnt take his regular diabetes medicine this led to a spike in sugar levels leading to renal failure in patients with diabetes these tetra packs and mislabelled drinks can lead to cardiac kidney and liver failure he said