Cocaine use quadruples the risk of sudden death

A joint investigation by the Center for Biomedical Research in Mental Health Network (CIBERSAM), the Carlos III Health Institute, the University of the Basque Country and the Basque Institute of Legal Medicine (Spain) has concluded that consuming cocaine multiplies the risk by four. or sudden cardiovascular death in people between 19 and 49 years old . The work has been published in the magazine Addiction .

The researchers examined all the sudden deaths that the Bizkaia Forensic Pathology Service analyzed during seven years (2003-2009); In total, there were 437 cases in which death was not due to illness or acute intoxication and where the subjects had an instantaneous death or within six hours of the onset of symptoms.

Then, taking into account that the subjects were between 19 and 49 years old, they performed a full autopsy, performed toxicological and histopathological studies, and the clinical data and circumstances of the deaths were reviewed .

After establishing a temporal link between recent cocaine use and death, other factors such as obesity, diabetes, smoking or hypertension were also taken into account. The analysis of all the data revealed that the percentage of cases among those who died due to sudden death where the use of this narcotic substance had been detected was almost 10% , becoming the main risk factor for death in people under 50 years of age . Another remarkable conclusion of the study was the fact that men had a 1.6 times greater risk than women of suffering sudden death from being cocaine users.