A recent study by a UT Southwestern professor of psychiatry found that young adults who abuse amphetamines could be at an enhanced risk for suffering a tear in the main artery that leads from the heart.

To come to this conclusion, researchers studied the medical records of nearly 31 million people who were between the ages of 18 and 49 years old. These individuals had been hospitalized sometime between 1995 and 2007.

Dr. Arthur Westover, the study’s lead author, noted that aortic dissection is very rare in young people. When it does occur, however, it often leads to death. If a physician encounters aortic dissection in a young adult, that individual should be screened for amphetamine abuse to determine the potential cause.

The largest artery in the body, the aorta stems from the heart and dissection takes place when a tear develops in the inner layer of the aorta. This allows blood to separate or dissect, which can eventually cause a rupture to occur in the aortic wall. The result of this rupture is generally death.

Amphetamines are often abused by individuals due to their stimulating effects. Such drugs act on the body in a way very similar to cocaine, which is also known to have adverse effects on the heart. Amphetamines are proven to increase blood pressure in some individuals and heightened blood pressure – or hypertension – is a known trigger that can cause the dissection of the aorta.

Amphetamine Abuse Can Cause Aortic Dissection and Death is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

This finding, discussed in Science Daily shows that such an impact on the memory presents itself long after the exposure ends. One interesting finding from this study showed that the memory deficit did not emerge until adulthood. Those in adolescence using the drug still had full memory capacity.

"Animals that were given the amphetamine during the adolescent time period were worse at tasks requiring working memory than adult animals that were given the same amount of amphetamine as adults," said psychology professor Joshua Gulley, who led the study with graduate student Jessica Stanis. "This tells us that their working memory capacity has been significantly altered by that pre-exposure to amphetamine."

To conduct this study, researchers tested two types of amphetamine exposure, which included intermittent – or a steady dose every other day – and “binge escalation” in which increasing amounts of the drug were given over a period of four days and then followed by a simulated binge or a high dose every two hours for eight hours on the fifth day.

This study reveals some of the potential long-term consequences associated with amphetamine abuse by adolescents and could be relevant to those taking amphetamines for therapeutic purposes, including those being treated for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

"Adolescence is a time when the brain is continuing to develop into its mature form, so drug exposure during this critical period could have long-lasting, negative consequences," Gully said. "Our findings reveal that adolescents are particularly sensitive to the adverse effects of amphetamine on cognitive function and that these effects can persist well after drug use is discontinued."
 

High Amphetamine Use in Adolescence Impacts Adult Memory is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment