Acute Toxicity of a Novel Class of Hallucinogen

Abass, Marwa; Hassan, Mohamad; Abd Elhaleem, Manal; Abd Elaziz, Hesham; Abd-Allah, Rehab

doi:10.21608/ajfm.2017.18280

Acute Toxicity of a Novel Class of Hallucinogen "Voodoo" (Clinical and Experimental Study)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Departments of Forensic Medicine and Clinical Toxicology ,Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Al sharqia, Egypt.

² Departments of Histology and Cell Biology,Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Al sharqia, Egypt

³ Departments of Pathology,Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Al sharqia, Egypt

⁴ Departments of Phamacognosy of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Al sharqia, Egypt.

10.21608/ajfm.2017.18280

Abstract

Background: Voodoo is a newly emerged hallucinogenic substance in Egypt that target the youth aged 15-30 years causing many reported cases of acute toxicity. This made the Egyptian Ministry of Health in 2014 to list it in drug schedule 1 and warned traffickers and users that they are now under criminal penalties. Aim: this work was conducted to investigate the acute toxic effects of this hallucinogenic substance on human and experimental animals. Methods: this work included both clinical and experimental studies. The clinical study included 17 patients with acute Voodoo poisoning admitted to Poisoning Control Unit - Zagazig University Hospitals between July, 2015 and April, 2016. The experimental study included forty adult male albino rats were used for calculation of LD50 of Voodoo extract. The extract was prepared using Gas chromatography/ Mass spectrophotometry (GC/MS) to be given intra peritoneally to experimental animals. Results: the patients' main complaints were hallucination, disorientation and extreme fear of death, a picture resemble acute cannabis poisoning but with negative urinary screening test for cannabis and other common addictive substances. GC/MS analysis revealed the chief substance in the extract (54.54%) was a chemical analogue of PB 22; a designer synthetic cannabinoids. LD 50 of the extract was estimated to be 1334 mg/Kg. Liver, kidneys and brain were the most affected studied organs. The liver showed severe congestion and macro vesicular steatosis with diffuse intracytoplasmic esinophlic bodies. Kidneys showed focal vacuolar degeneration of renal tubules, accentuation of glomerular basement membrane, hyallinosis of renal tubules with large areas of epithelial necrosis. Brain cells were markedly shrunken and vacuolated. Conclusion: it could be concluded that Voodoo proved to have many toxic effects on human and experimental animals and further studies are warranted to evaluate other toxic effects of this substance.

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