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Clinical InvestigationsDRUGSEvidence of Chronic Damage to the Pulmonary Microcirculation in Habitual Users of Alkaloidal (“Crack”) Cocaine
Section snippets
Subjects
A total of 36 subjects were evaluated (10 NS, 10 CS, 6 CTS, and 10 TS). All subjects were participants in an ongoing study evaluating the effects of habitual use of cocaine on the lung.23 Subjects were 23 to 50 years of age, with no known medical illnesses, and were selected for inclusion because they were either lifelong NS or habitual CS, TS, or CTS. Current cocaine use was verified by positive urine levels of cocaine metabolite. While most of the crack users had used marijuana in the past,
Subjects
Thirty-six subjects were studied (22 men and 14 women; mean age, 37.5 ± 7.5 years), including 10 NS, 10 CS, 6 CTS, and 10 TS. Subject characteristics are described in Table 1. Cocaine smokers (both CS and CTS) had a history of current or recent (within 6 months) smoking of alkaloidal cocaine on a regular basis for ≥ 8.1 years and an average of ≥ 1.0 g/wk during the past year. CS and CTS had last smoked cocaine between 1 h and 48 h before bronchoscopy, except for one CTS who had last smoked
Discussion
Diffuse alveolar hemorrhage associated with dyspnea and hemoptysis is believed to be a relatively common manifestation of cocaine abuse,3 although its occurrence has been underemphasized in the literature. Since the inception of the crack cocaine epidemic in the mid-1980s, several cases of acute pulmonary hemorrhage have been reported in temporal association with cocaine smoking.8,13,32,33 In some cases, diffuse alveolar hemorrhage has been associated with the acute crack lung syndrome,13 which
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank Wendy Aft for manuscript preparation.
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Reprint of: Pulmonary complications in cocaine users
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Pulmonary complications in cocaine users
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Driving under the influence of cocaine
2015, Toxicologie Analytique et Clinique
Supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant No. RO1 DA 08254.