Is Soursop Tea Safe to Drink Every Day? What Gets Into the Cup

Nobody can say that it is. Soursop leaf tea is caffeine free, and a cup carries far less annonacin than a fruit: about 0.14 mg a cup against about 15 mg in a fruit in one analysis, and about 0.4 mg a cup from crushed leaves. But the only long-term human data come from the French Caribbean, where people with an unusual form of parkinsonism had drunk more soursop leaf tea than people without it, and in a 2022 analysis of 180 patients any herbal-tea consumption went with more severe disease. The French food safety agency in 2010 and an EFSA-hosted review in 2020 both declined to set a safe intake.^{1, 2, 3, 5, 6} This page is one spoke of the Wellgard soursop guide.

Evidence at a glance

• Human studies of tea with a health outcome: none; one 14-day non-randomised study of 60 adults measured blood pressure.⁸
• Safety: herbal tea went with 28.2 times the odds of atypical parkinsonism in 87 patients (1999) and 2.91 times the odds of severe disease in 180 patients (2022).^{2, 3}
• Exposure: about 0.14 mg of annonacin a cup from crumpled leaves, about 0.4 mg from crushed leaves, about 15 mg in an average fruit.^{1, 5}

Sources checked on 17 October 2026.

What is soursop tea?

An infusion or decoction of the dried leaves of Annona muricata, not the fruit, sold as loose leaves and tea bags and made at home by steeping or boiling.¹ It contains no caffeine, and a share of the leaf's acetogenins, chiefly annonacin, the compound the safety research is about.¹ The fruit and the leaf are compared on soursop fruit vs soursop leaves.

How much annonacin gets into a cup of soursop tea?

Less than a fruit, and more when the leaves are crushed or boiled.

The two laboratory estimates disagree on how much of the leaf's annonacin a hot-water tea pulls out: about 15 to 50% in the French agency's figures, about 0.2% in the Brazilian study.^{5, 7} Preparation matters: crushing, boiling and longer steeping extract more, and every figure in the table is an estimate from a few batches.

What did the studies brew?

The one human study of soursop tea with a measured outcome gave 60 adults with hypertension, without randomisation, 200 mL a day for 14 days of a tea made by boiling eight leaves in 600 mL of water for 15 minutes; blood pressure fell in the tea group and not in the control group, and the study did not report whether anyone was on blood pressure medicines or had side effects.⁸ That is a description of what researchers did, not a method to follow: no agency has set a safe amount of soursop leaf, in any preparation, for anyone.^{5, 6}

What did the Caribbean studies find about soursop tea?

That the people with the unusual illness had drunk more of it. In the 1999 case-control study of 87 Guadeloupe patients, those with a progressive supranuclear palsy-like illness or atypical parkinsonism drank more herbal tea than patients with Parkinson's disease (odds ratio 28.2) and than controls (6.48).² A 2007 study of 160 patients found the same pattern for fruit and leaf infusions together.² In 2022, among 180 Caribbean patients with any form of degenerative parkinsonism, any lifetime consumption of Annonaceae herbal tea went with 2.91 times the odds of belonging to the severe cluster with cognitive impairment (95% confidence interval 1.34 to 6.56), and the authors called for "more restrictive public health preventive recommendations".³ These are observational studies: they show an association, not proof that soursop caused the illness, and exposure was recalled. The laboratory and animal work that explains how it could, and the 2025 and 2026 studies that extended the association to French Guiana and to ordinary Parkinson's disease, are on annonacin, soursop and parkinsonism.

Why "less than a fruit" is not the same as "safe"

Because the concern is cumulative. The animal brain changes came from steady exposure: rats given purified annonacin into a vein for 28 days lost 31.7% of their dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra, and mice given a commercial soursop juice as their drinking fluid for 12 months, with annonacin at 16.2 mg per litre, developed phosphorylated tau in their neurons.^{4, 9} The French agency's reading of the Guadeloupe data put lifetime annonacin intake at about 150 g in the atypical cases against 20 to 30 g in patients with Parkinson's disease and in healthy controls.⁵ A daily cup at 0.14 to 0.4 mg adds up to roughly 50 to 150 mg a year; a daily fruit, about 5 g. Tea is the smaller exposure, and that is as far as the arithmetic goes: nobody has measured how much annonacin over how many years matters in people, and the 2022 analysis found the association with "any" tea, not with heavy use.³ No agency has turned "less" into "safe".^{5, 6}

Does soursop tea interact with medicines?

Possibly, and nobody has tested it in people. In anaesthetised rats, a soursop leaf extract given into a vein lowered blood pressure in a dose-dependent way by blocking calcium channels, so an additive effect with blood pressure medicines such as amlodipine, ramipril or losartan is plausible and untested.¹⁰ Blood-sugar lowering is reported in animals and cells with no controlled human trial, so the same applies to metformin, gliclazide and insulin.¹¹ The NHS advice on herbal medicines is the rule to follow: always check first with a pharmacist before taking a herbal medicine if you are already taking other medicine, tell any doctor treating you that you take it, and do not stop taking any prescribed medicine without first talking to your doctor.¹² The medicine-by-medicine detail is on soursop side effects and who should avoid it.

Who should not drink soursop tea?

Anyone with Parkinson's disease or another neurological condition, anyone pregnant or breastfeeding, anyone taking medicines for blood pressure or diabetes, and anyone having cancer treatment should talk to their GP, pharmacist or specialist team before taking soursop leaf, tea, capsules, extracts or bitters.^{3, 6, 10} Children too: the NHS does not recommend herbal medicines for children because not enough is known about their safety.¹²

What we don't know

• The long-term safety of regular soursop tea in people; no study has followed tea drinkers forward.^{3, 6}
• The annonacin content of any UK tea bag or loose leaf; none is disclosed.
• How much of the leaf's acetogenins a kitchen brew extracts; the two laboratory estimates differ more than a hundredfold.^{5, 7}

Frequently asked questions

What happens if I drink soursop tea every day?

Nobody has measured it. The 14-day study found lower blood pressure in 60 adults and reported nothing about side effects; the Caribbean studies found that people with an unusual parkinsonism had drunk more herbal tea over their lifetimes.^{2, 3, 8} Between those two there is no data on what a daily cup does to a healthy adult over a year.

Why can't you drink soursop tea every day?

Nothing forbids it; the point is that no agency will say you can. The French food safety agency concluded in 2010 that it could not propose a quantitative intake for soursop, and an EFSA-hosted review in 2020 found that the lack of long-term studies "does not allow the establishment of a safe intake level".^{5, 6}

Does it matter whether I boil the leaves or steep them?

Yes. Crushing and boiling extract more acetogenins than steeping whole or crumpled leaves: about 0.4 mg of annonacin a cup against 0.14 mg in the French agency's figures.⁵

Is soursop tea legal in the UK?

The fruit is an established food. The EU Novel Food Catalogue classes the leaves as a novel food needing pre-market authorisation, no GB authorisation exists, and the FSA treats the catalogue as indicative in Great Britain, so leaf tea is the seller's compliance question; see is soursop legal in the UK?.¹³

Sources

1. Champy P, et al. Quantification of acetogenins in Annona muricata linked to atypical parkinsonism in Guadeloupe. Chemical analysis, non-US government funding, 2005. PubMed 16078200.
2. Caparros-Lefebvre D, Elbaz A. Possible relation of atypical parkinsonism in the French West Indies with consumption of tropical plants: a case-control study. Case-control study, 87 patients, 1999. PubMed 10440304; and Lannuzel A, et al. Atypical parkinsonism in Guadeloupe: a common risk factor for two closely related phenotypes? Cross-sectional study, 160 patients, non-US government funding, 2007. PubMed 17303592.
3. Cleret de Langavant L, et al. Annonaceae consumption worsens disease severity and cognitive deficits in degenerative parkinsonism. Observational study, 180 patients, non-US government funding, 2022. PubMed 36210778.
4. Champy P, et al. Annonacin, a lipophilic inhibitor of mitochondrial complex I, induces nigral and striatal neurodegeneration in rats. Animal study, rats, 28 days intravenous, non-US government funding, 2004. PubMed 14675150.
5. AFSSA (now ANSES). Avis relatif aux risques liés à la consommation de corossol et de ses préparations, saisine 2008-SA-0171. Agency opinion, in French, 28 April 2010; its per-fruit, per-cup and lifetime figures draw on Champy 2005 (PubMed 16078200) and Lannuzel 2007 (PubMed 17303592). anses.fr.
6. Raclariu-Manolica AC, et al. Risk assessment regarding the use of Annona muricata in food supplements. EU-FORA fellowship technical report hosted by EFSA, not a Panel opinion, 2020. doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2020.e181112.
7. de Moraes IVM, et al. UPLC-QTOF-MS and NMR analyses of graviola (Annona muricata) leaves. Laboratory extraction study, one leaf source, Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia 26(2):174-179, 2016. doi:10.1016/j.bjp.2015.12.001.
8. Siagian M, et al. Blood pressure reduction in patients with hypertension through soursop leaf tea consumption. Non-randomised pre-post study, 60 adults, 14 days, Althea Medical Journal 11(4):212-218, 2024. doi:10.15850/amj.v11n4.3342.
9. Rottscholl R, et al. Chronic consumption of Annona muricata juice triggers and aggravates cerebral tau phosphorylation in wild-type and MAPT transgenic mice. Animal study, mice, 12 months, non-US government funding, 2016. PubMed 27569447.
10. Nwokocha CR, et al. Possible mechanisms of action of the hypotensive effect of Annona muricata (soursop) in normotensive Sprague-Dawley rats. Animal study, anaesthetised rats, intravenous leaf extract, 2012. PubMed 22950673.
11. Martín Del Campo-Rayas P, et al. Annona muricata as possible alternative in the treatment of hyperglycemia: a systematic review. Systematic review, no human trial identified, 2022. PubMed 35076315.
12. NHS. Herbal medicines and complementary therapies. Page last reviewed 1 May 2026. nhs.uk.
13. Food Standards Agency. Register of novel food authorisations (Great Britain), last updated 31 March 2026, searched 17 October 2026: no soursop entry; and Novel foods authorisation guidance, 30 May 2018. data.food.gov.uk; gov.uk. EU Novel Food Status Catalogue, entry Annona muricata L., last updated 27 May 2024, read 17 October 2026, ec.europa.eu.

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