New Disvovery: How Cocaine Eats Away the Flesh, Rot Skin and Turn Ears Black

 

For years, doctors have been warning of the health problems associated with cocaine. From heart attacks to depression and even death, experts now are warning it can actually make a person's skin rot.

Cocaine arriving in the US and UK is now routinely being cut with a drug called Levamisole, which causes human flesh to wither and die. In many cases, it has turned people's ears black.

One woman suffered horrific skin lesions, which turned out to be due to taking cocaine cut with Levamisole - according to doctors describing her case in the  journal BMJ case reports.

The 42-year-old woman came to the hospital suffering from joint and muscle pain, abdominal pain, and sores on her skin.

The skin sores turned out to be due to a condition called vasculitis - where the blood vessels become inflamed, and were caused by Leviamosole.

The drug is normally used by vets as a de-wormer for livestock, but was banned from human-consumption after its skin-rotting effects were discovered.

Patients treated with the drug saw their white blood counts plummet, meaning they caught more infections, as well as their skin dying and their ears turning black.

However, its stimulant qualities have made it a convenient ingredient to cut cocaine with, and drug producers in Latin America have begun mixing it with the drug before shipping it to Europe.

Levamisole can rot the skin off the noses, ears and cheeks of cocaine users who have unwittingly come into contract with it, experts say.

The gruesome wounds appear days after a hit because of an immune reaction that attacks the blood vessels supplying the skin, said author Dr Noah Craft, a dermatologist with the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute.

U.S. drugs officials first sounded the warning over cocaine laced with Levamisol several years ago after a flurry of victims of its flesh-eating side effects in New York and Los Angeles.

In April 2011, a report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration found that 82 per cent of seized cocaine contained Levamisole.

Source: Mailonline