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DALLAS, May 31 (UPI) _ The risk of heart
attack is 24 times higher the first hour after using cocaine, according to the first
large study of the long suspected tie between the drug and heart disease.
"Cocaine significantly increases the
risk of heart attack in individuals who are otherwise at low risk," said Dr.
Murray Mittleman, a researcher at the Institute for Prevention of Cardiovascular
Disease at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and head of the research
study.
He added, "This confirms the fact that
cocaine is dangerous to the heart, and the risk is very large. What we've added to
previous studies is the magnitude of the risk, which is 24 times greater, and the
duration, which is within one hour."
The study, which was funded by the National
Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the American Heart Association, appears in the
June 1 issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
In addition, people who suffered cocaine-related
heart attacks were younger than the population at large suffering heart attacks.
"The average age of people in the study
who suffered heart attacks soon after using cocaine was only 44," Mittleman
said. "That's about 17 years younger than the average heart attack patient."
Research in the past decade has suggested
there is a strong cause- and-effect relationship between using cocaine and heart
attacks and strokes. But Mittleman said this is the first study to examine the direct
short-term effects of cocaine on the heart.
More than 30 million Americans have tried
cocaine at least once, and there are about 5 million regular users, according to
the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The study is based on interviews of 2,664
men and 1,282 women who had suffered a non-fatal heart attack between 1989 and 1996
at 64 medical centers across the United States. The individuals ranged in age from
20 to 92. Thirty-eight people reported using cocaine in the year prior to having
their heart attack, and nine reported use of the drug within an hour before their
heart attack.
Of the 38 cocaine users who had heart attacks,
29 had no previous symptoms of heart disease.
Cocaine users tend to be male and to smoke
cigarettes, another major risk factor for heart attack. Smoking and cocaine use were
accounted for when determining the cocaine-use risk for heart attack.
The researchers said cocaine might trigger
a heart attack by causing a sudden rise in blood pressure, heart rate and contractions
of the left chamber of the heart. Cocaine also constricts the coronary arteries that
feed blood to the heart, possibly obstructing blood flow to the heart and brain.
Mittleman said more research is needed to
see if the risk of heart attack varies between one-time or repeat cocaine use. He
and his colleagues also plan a similar study on the relationship between stroke and
cocaine.
(Written by Lori Valigra in Cambridge, Mass.)
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