High life, high risk
REASON No. 495 to flush the uppers: Cocaine and amphetamines may increase the risk of stroke.
Crunching numbers from a database of more than 3 million hospital patients, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas found that amphetamine abuse was associated with a nearly five-fold increase in hemorrhagic stroke -- bleeding within the brain.
Cocaine abuse, they report, was associated with more than double the risk of both hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke, caused by blocked blood flow to the brain.
The study, which appears in the April edition of Archives of General Psychiatry, looked at patients 18 to 44 discharged from Texas hospitals from 2000 through 2003.
“I talked to some friends about my study and they said, ‘Wow, big shock, drugs are bad for your brain,’ ” says lead author Dr. Arthur Westover, a psychiatrist. “But I think there’s a bigger message here about methamphetamine abuse.”
Knowing that amphetamines can cause a stroke is a more compelling reason to quit than the message “meth is bad for you, or will make your teeth rot out,” he says.
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