Levamisole can trigger vasculitis, a condition where the blood vessels become inflamed, causing red and black patches to form on the face (pictured) 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. 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.
Powerful cow and horse deworming agent levamisole is now routinely used to cut the. Cocaine cut with a cattle de-wormer is making people's skin. About indy100.
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. 4.6k shares 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. 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. In the UK, Liberal Democrat minister Norman Baker ordered an analysis of seized cocaine shipments last year which showed that around 80 per cent contained the medicine.
The presence of Levamisole marks a shift in the economics of cocaine smuggling. The drug had hitherto arrived in Britain unadulterated and was subsequently cut by British dealers with glucose or baking soda before being sold. Now it is apparently being cut at source before leaving producing nations like Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia, where Levamisole is cheap and commonly used in agriculture. Similarly, a 2011 case study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology described six cocaine users plagued with dark purple patches of dying flesh. Download Free Tintenherz Rapidshare Downloads. 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.
Another showed a different woman who was admitted for the painful rash on her cheeks, ears and legs after using crack cocaine cut with Leviamosole for three days.
