Case Study: Lead Poisoning From Ayurvedic Medicine

[lipi]

Lead is used as a diluting agent for illegal drugs such as heroin and marijuana. However, drug users are not the only ones who need to watch out for the toxic heavy metal ― believers in certain traditional remedies do as well. The case history of a young man, as related by Victor Suárez, MD, and his colleagues from the University Hospital of Cologne, Germany, which was published in the German Medical Weekly, illustrates this point.

[Pipasha]

@lipi The 24-year-old man came to the emergency department because of crampy lower abdominal pain and poor performance status, according to the authors. Investigations that were conducted during a previous inpatient hospital stay had not yielded any indicative findings. The patient had no preexisting conditions other than previous cocaine and cannabis abuse. When asked, the patient reported that he had received an Indian (Ayurvedic) remedy from a friend. He had been taking two capsules of it each day for about a month. According to the authors, the analysis of the capsules taken by the patient revealed that there was 34 mg of lead per two capsules. This corresponds to about 136 times the permissible dose.