DRUG ABUSE CAN TRIGGER STROKE, HEMORRHAGE

PARIS (AFP) -- Doctors are facing an alarming rise in the incidence of
strokes among young people who have taken cocaine, amphetamines or
Ecstasy, researchers report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

These drugs can trigger a cerebral hemorrhage among people who have
underlying arterial problems, warned scientists from London's National
Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.

"The growing pandemic of cocaine use in society is providing
increasing evidence of its association with intracerebral hemorrhage,"
they reported.

"It is becoming increasingly evident that misuse of cocaine in people
with underlying vascular abnormalities may lead to
hemorrhage."

The team said that in the past seven months, it had treated 13 drug
users for strokes, 12 of whom had damaged or malformed cerebral arteries.

Four of the 12 died, one was left with severe brain damage, and the
others eventually recovered after surgery.

Strokes are caused when a blood vessel in the brain bursts, causing
surrounding brain cells to die from lack of oxygen. Depending on the
size of the hemorrhage, memory loss, disability, coma or death can
result.

They occur quite rarely among the young, mainly caused by a disease of
the heart or blood system.

The authors urged doctors to be alert to early symptoms that could be
caused by drug use. Youngsters who suffer severe headaches immediately
after using amphetamines, Ecstasy or cocaine could be vulnerable to a
stroke.

The report is the latest to highlight the potentially lethal effect of
"designer" drugs on the cardiovascular system of the young and
apparently healthy.

John Henry, an expert at St. Mary's Hospital in London, believes that
up to 10 percent of people reporting to his emergency room with chest
pains owe their problems to cocaine abuse.

According to researchers at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,
cocaine triggers part of the immune system that is called the
complement cascade.

This mechanism is normally unleashed by viruses or bacteria that enter
the body. The immune system seeks to overwhelm them by creating a wave
of complex proteins that build on the cell's walls, causing the cell
to burst.

An estimated 25-30 million Americans have used cocaine, and five to
six million use it regularly, the British team says, saying use of the
drug had reached "epidemic" proportions in the United States and Britain.