Antidote Effective for Methanol and Antifreeze Poisoning

An antidote for antifreeze poisoning also works against methanol, a lethal wood alcohol that is found in a variety of industrial products and is sometimes put in black market liquor, researchers say.

A study in today’s New England Journal of Medicine describes fomepizole’s use on 11 methanol-poisoning patients at hospitals around the country. Nine recovered; two, whose brains had been damaged by lack of oxygen by the time they arrived at the hospital, died.

Methanol is found in windshield washer fluid, camp stove fuel, copier fluid and some paints and varnishes. It killed more than 200 people who drank black market liquor in El Salvador and Kenya last fall.

Most of the 1,000 or so poisonings a year in the United States are accidental, said Dr. Marsha Ford, director of the Carolinas Poison Center and a participant in the study.