Cocaine’s Wicked Double Punch Causes Major Heart Stress
(HealthDay News) – Does cocaine use cause your blood vessels to constrict, putting so much strain on the heart that a heart attack can occur?
Or does cocaine use cause your blood vessels to expand in an effort to reduce a rapid blood pressure spike? This makes your heart beat too fast, which in turn, causes a heart attack.
The answer: both of these occurrences are likely when a person snorts cocaine.
These findings expanding knowledge of cocaine's damaging effect on the heart may help scientists develop new drugs to treat drug abusers who land in emergency rooms, according to researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas .
Cocaine reportedly causes more deaths than any other illegal drug, and it's estimated to be responsible for 30 percent of all drug-related visits to emergency rooms in the United States . Researchers have estimated that the risk of a heart attack jumps by 24 times in the hour after a person uses cocaine.
Doctors have long known that cocaine causes heart attack and stroke, especially in regular users, said Ronald Herning, a research psychologist with the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda , Md. .
"It probably weakens blood vessels," he added. "The increasing heart rate and blood pressure wears them out."
Experts thought that the effects of cocaine made blood vessels shrink, causing higher blood pressure, just as squeezing a garden hose causes water pressure to rise. But they based their theories on tests done on animals, the UT Southwestern researchers concluded. But to de certain, the scientists gave doses of cocaine to 15 male volunteers who said they had never taken the drug before. The men received the drug through nasal drops and, separately, through injection in the arm.
The doses were very small, according to the report, with no euphoric effect.
The blood vessels did constrict in the men who received cocaine through injection into the blood stream. But when they received cocaine through the nose, the blood vessels actually became larger, allowing more blood through.
Enlarged blood vessels would normally cause lower blood pressure. But the researchers suspect that rapid heartbeats kept blood pressure high, much like turning up a faucet increases water pressure in that garden hose.
The conclusion was that the brain was sending signals to the heart for it to pump harder.
The body's reaction to the negative effects of cocaine actually prevents the drug from doing more damage, according to Dr. Murray Mittleman director of cardiovascular epidemiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston .
"Without (the expansion of blood vessels), we'd see much worse consequences than what we already see," Mittleman said.
Mittleman said he believed that the findings, which were first published in the journal Circulation , may lead to better treatments for cocaine users who suffer from heart problems.
On the Web
The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has more information about cocaine, with its Research Report on Cocaine Abuse and Addiction.
SOURCES:
Ronald Herning, Ph.D., research psychologist, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bethesda , Md. ; Murray A. Mittleman, M.D., director, cardiovascular epidemiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center , Boston , Mass. ; March 5, 2002, issue of Circulation .
Author:
Randy Dotinga, HealthDay Reporter
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