Prevention of toxicity from oral cocaine by activated charcoal in mice

✍ Scribed by Christian Tomaszewski; Patrick McKinney; Scott Phillips; Jeffrey Brent; Kenneth Kulig

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 262 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1097-6760
• DOI: 10.1016/s0196-0644(05)80404-4

✦ Synopsis

Interventions: Fasted mice were given aqueous cocaine hydrochloride (0.8% final concentration) 100 mg/kg body weight orally by gavage tube. One minute later, animals received one of three treatments by gavage: 1 g activated charcoal/kg body weight, 2 g activated charcoal/kg body weight, or an equivolume of water (control). All treatments consisted of 20 mL/kg body weight of an activated charcoal slurry with water.

Measurements: After 24-hour observation, proportions of seizures and deaths between each group were compared using Pearson Z 2 test followed by Fisher's exact test (P< .017 for significance after Bonferroni's correction).

Main results: There were 20 seizures and 16 deaths in the control group (20 mice). There were four seizures (P= .0004) and one death (P= .0004)in the 1-g activated charcoal/kg group (ten mice) and five seizures (P= .0018)and three deaths (P= .015)in the 2-g activated charcoal/kg group (ten mice).

Conclusion:

In this mouse model, activated charcoal decreased the incidence of seizures and death after an enteral cocaine hydrochloride overdose.