John Luciew
Penn LiveFri, 30 Mar 2018 16:46 UTC
Arjun Patel
There is a new and dangerous overdose threat, and it is found in anti-diarrhea products like Imodium A-D. It is called loperamide, and it can get you high but also take your life.
Now comes word that a 29-year-old Pittsburgh area man died as a result of a loperamide overdose.
As
KDKA in Pittsburgh reports, the unusual cause of death for Arjun Patel, 29, of Fox Chapel was ruled this week in his November 2017 death.
The overdose danger of loperamide has quickly grown so great, the FDA recently asked manufacturers of these anti-diarrhea medications to change the way they package their products in order to curb the growing abuse of these drugs, KDKA reports.
The station ads that loperamide poisoning cases have risen sharply over the past two years in western Pennsylvania, with addicts buying hundreds of Imodium-like pills and taking them to get high:
"Since 2015 through the end of 2017, just at the Pittsburgh Poison Center, we saw a 167 percent increase in calls related to loperamide toxicity, with more than half of those people needing to go to the hospital," Dr. Michael Lynch, of UPMC's Pittsburgh Poison Center, told KDKA.
Comment: More from
Live Science:
Although the drug is safe in doses used to treat diarrhea, in large doses it can cause serious side effects, including breathing and heart problems, and even death. A new report describes two cases of people who died after overdosing on Imodium, also called loperamide, which is sold over-the-counter.
"People looking for either self-treatment of withdrawal symptoms [for opioid addiction] or euphoria are overdosing on loperamide with sometimes deadly consequences," study co-author William Eggleston, a clinical toxicologist at the Upstate New York Poison Center, in Syracuse, said in a statement. "This is another reminder that all drugs, including those sold without a prescription, can be dangerous when not used as directed."
Loperamide is an opioid drug, meaning it belongs to the same class of drugs as some prescription painkillers. Regular doses of the drug won't cause a "high" because only a tiny amount gets into the blood stream. But at very large doses, the drug can get into the blood stream and brain, and cause effects similar to those of opioid painkillers, the researchers said.
Comment: More from Live Science: