Inhalant abuse

Intentional abuse of 1,1-difluoroethane has been reported to cause transient symptoms such as confusion, tremors, pulmonary irritation, loss of consciousness and, rarely, coma. In the last five years, 17 cases from the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office showed the presence of 1,1-difluoroethane in postmortem tissues, and the gas was cited in the cause of death in 13 of those cases. Detected during routine ethanol screening, 1,1-difluoroethane was evaluated for concentrations in peripheral blood, central blood and vitreous humor by a slightly modified method published by Avella et al. In many cases, death from abuse of 1,1-difluoroethane seemed to occur within minutes of intentional abuse; large concentrations (>100 mg/L) of the gas were still in the blood. It is important that forensic toxicology laboratories have routine screening procedures to detect 1,1-difluoroethane because cases exist in which evidence of use from cans may not be present in proximity to the decedent, or may be undiscovered in the debris of a motor vehicle accident. It is also important to quantify concentrations of 1,1-difluoroethane in both peripheral blood and central blood, whose ratio may be useful in interpreting how recently the use of the 1,1-difluoroethane occurred.

Genotoxicity of glue sniffing/huffing and tobacco use has been examined in 302 street boys (median age 13 years) and 50 age-matched control school boys who were neither tobacco nor glue users. All the street boys were tobacco users. In addition, 155 were addicted to gasp an industrial adhesive popularly known as ‘Golden glue’. Micronucleus (MN) frequency was determined as a measure of chromosomal breakage in exfoliated buccal epithelial cells (BECs) and DNA double strand breaks were quantitatively assessed by counting γ-H2AX foci using immunofluorescence microscopy. Micronucleated cell frequencies (MCFs) in BEC of glue non-addicted (only tobacco) and addicted (tobacco plus glue) street boys were 1.87 ± 1.06‰ and 4.04 ± 2.55‰ respectively, which were significantly higher than that of control (0.32 ± 0.11‰, p < 0.0001). Similarly, the numbers γ-H2AX foci in nuclei of BEC were 2.3- and 5.2-times more than control in glue non-addicted and addicted street boys respectively (p < 0.0001). Spearman's rank correlation revealed a strong positive association between years of glue addiction with MCFs and γ-H2AX foci numbers, and the association between glue addiction and chromosomal and DNA damage remained positive and significant after controlling income, spending on addiction and loss of appetite as potential confounders in multivariate logistic regression analysis. Thus, addiction to tobacco among the street children in India is associated with chromosomal and DNA damage in BECs and the severity of these changes is significantly increased by the habit of sniffing/huffing of industrial glue.

More than 22 million Americans age 12 and older have used inhalants, and every year more than 750,000 use inhalants for the first time. Despite the substantial prevalence and serious toxicities of inhalant use, it has been termed &quot;the forgotten epidemic.&quot; Inhalant abuse remains the least-studied form of substance abuse, although research on its epidemiology, neurobiology, treatment, and prevention has accelerated in recent years. This review examines current findings in these areas, identifies gaps in the research and clinical literatures pertaining to inhalant use, and discusses future directions for inhalant-related research and practice efforts.

Background. Youth populations are vulnerable to substance use particularly in developing countries where circumstances may be favorable for it. There is no published data on substance use among the youth in Sudan other than on tobacco use. Objectives. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence, circumstances, and factors associated with substance use. Methods. An institution-based survey was conducted on a sample of 500 students. Data was collected using a questionnaire designed by the WHO for student drug surveys and analyzed using IBM SPSS version 20. Results. The overall prevalence of substance use is 31%. The current prevalence of tobacco, cannabis, alcohol, amphetamines, tranquilizers, inhalants, opiates, cocaine, and heroin use was 13.7%, 4.9%, 2.7%, 2.4%, 3.2%, 1%, 1.2%, 0.7%, and 0.5%, respectively. Curiosity (33.1%) was the main reason for initiation of substance use. The main adverse effects reported were health problems (19.7%) and theft (19.7%). Peers (40.9%...

Abuse of harmful legal products that can be inhaled or ingested is a serious and growing problem in many rural Alaskan communities, and particularly so among preteens. This study analyses data collected during baseline measurements of a 5-year NIH/NIDA-funded study entitled A Community Trial to Prevent Youth&#39;s Abuse of Harmful Legal Products in Alaska. Youth in 8 communities located throughout the state participated in a survey during the fall of 2009 to measure the prevalence and availability of harmful legal products (n=697). The goal of the analysis presented here is to compare the contextual factors of inhalant users and non-users in rural Alaskan communities. As reported in national surveys of substance use among youth, participants in this study indicated using alcohol more than any other substance. Inhalants were the second-most common substance abused, higher than either cigarettes or marijuana. Lifetime use varied among demographic factors such as age, gender and ethnic...

More than 22 million Americans age 12 and older have used inhalants, and every year more than 750,000 use inhalants for the first time. Despite the substantial prevalence and serious toxicities of inhalant use, it has been termed "the forgotten epidemic." Inhalant abuse remains the least-studied form of substance abuse, although research on its epidemiology, neurobiology, treatment, and prevention has accelerated in recent years. This review examines current findings in these areas, identifies gaps in the research and clinical literatures pertaining to inhalant use, and discusses future directions for inhalant-related research and practice efforts.

Inhalants are substances whose chemical vapors are inhaled to produce euphoric, disinhibiting, and exciting effects. Data on inhalant abuse in India are relatively scarce. We report the demographic and clinical profile of inhalant users among the treatment seekers at a Drug De-addiction and Treatment Centre in north India. The records of treatment seekers at the Drug De-addiction and Treatment Centre, over 10 years (2002-2011) were scanned to identify 92 cases reporting inhalant use. Of these 92 cases, the complete record files were available for 87 (94.6%) cases. These case files were reviewed and the relevant data were collected and analyzed. Over the study period of 10 years, the number of cases with inhalant abuse per year rose steadily to peak at 20 cases (4.08% of new cases) in 2006 and then stabilized at 1-3 per cent of new cases annually. Of the 87 cases studied, all were males with a mean age of 18.9±4.12 yr, mean education of 9.8±3.42 yr and mean family income of Rs. 7676±...

Sudden death due to inhalation of aliphatic hydrocarbons such as butane and propane is well described in the literature. The main mechanism involved is the induction of a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. This phenomenon is frequently associated with prisoners who accidentally die while sniffing these volatile substances with an abuse purpose. Furthermore, such prisoners are often under psychiatric treatment; specific drugs belonging to this pharmacological class lead to a drug-related QT interval prolongation, setting the stage for torsade de pointes. In this article, we present the case of a prisoner died after sniffing a butane-propane gas mixture from a prefilled camping stove gas canister. The man was under psychiatric drugs due to mental disorders. He was constantly subjected to electrocardiogram to monitor the QTc (corrected QT interval), which was 460 milliseconds long. Toxicological analysis on cadaveric samples was performed by means of gas chromatography (head space) and revealed...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between drug use and four kinds of stress symptoms in 954 Brazilian students from the 6th to the 11th grades, in 4 public and 5 private schools in the city of Sao Paulo. Based on their answers to the Drug Use Screening Inventory (DUSI-R) and to the Stress Scale for Adolescents (SSA), we compared regular drug users with non/occasional drug users regarding the frequency of four kinds of stress symptoms (psychological, cognitive, physiological, interpersonal), and the period in which it happened. When compared to non/occasional drug users, regular drug users presented higher levels of psychological, cognitive and physiological symptoms of stress and these symtoms were in the most severe spectrum of severity (near to exhaustion and exhaustion). The association between drug use and stress was even stronger in the youngest age group (11 to 13 years old). Most of the regular drug users were 16 years old and over, from upper-middle clas...

Cyclohexane (CHX) is an organic solvent commonly used as a drug-of-abuse. This drug increases the oxidative stress and glial reactivity in the hippocampus, which suggests that this brain region is vulnerable to CHX effects. This study aimed to establish the behavioral changes and the pathological alterations that occur in the Cornu Ammonis 3 (CA3) and Dentate Gyrus (DG) after a long-lasting exposure to CHX. We exposed CD1 mice to a recreational-like dose of CHX (~ 30,000 ppm) for 30 days and explored its consequences in motor skills, reward-seeking behavior, and the CA3 and DG hippocampal subfields. Twenty-four hours after the last administration of CHX, we found a significant decrease in the number of c-Fos+ cells in the hippocampal CA3 and DG regions. This event coincided with an increased in NMDAR1 expression and apoptotic cells in the CA3 region. At day 13th without CHX, we found a persistent reduction in the number of c-Fos+ and TUNEL+ cells in DG. At both time points, the CHX-exposed mice showed a strong overexpression of neuropeptide Y (NPY) in the CA3 stratum lucidum and the hippocampal hilus. In parallel, we used an operant-based task to assess motor performance and operant conditioning learning. The behavioral analysis indicated that CHX did not modify the acquisition of operant conditioning tasks, but affected some motor skills and increased the reward-seeking behavior. Altogether, this evidence reveals that CHX exposure provokes long-lasting changes in the hippocampal subfields, induces motor impairments and increases the motivation-guided behavior. These findings can help understand the deleterious effect of CHX into the adult hippocampus and unveil its potential to trigger addiction-like behaviors.

Abused solvents have effects similar to those of abused depressant drugs. This experiment evaluated the time course of the discriminative stimulus effects of toluene and 1,1,1-trichloroethane (TRI). Mice were trained to discriminate between i.p. injections of ethanol (EtOH; 1.25 g/kg) and saline in a two-lever operant task in which responding was under the control of a fixed-ratio 20 schedule. After 20-min inhalation exposures to toluene (500-6000 ppm) or TRI (1000-12,000 ppm), stimulus generalization was examined at 0, 5, 10, 20, and 40 min post-exposure. Ethanol doses&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;or=0.25 g/kg produced increases in EtOH-lever responding with full substitution occurring immediately after testing for doses between 1.25 and 2.5 g/kg. Toluene and TRI produced increased EtOH-lever responding at 0-10 min post-exposure with some EtOH-lever responding occurring up to 20-min post-exposure. Response rates were not decreased for any concentration of toluene or TRI immediately following inhalant exposure but several concentrations elevated rates from 5 to 40 min post-exposure. These results confirm and extend previous studies and show these solvents produce similar effects in EtOH-lever responding but with potency differences. The time-dependent differences in EtOH-lever responding suggest that as solvents are cleared from the body, the EtOH-like subjective effects also fade.