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Drug Digest

For people who swallow what seems like half a pharmacy every day, it must seem innocuous to add just one more drug. Yet recreational drugs can provoke hazardous, even deadly, side effects in patients taking highly active antiretroviral therapy.

According to the journal Drug Week, a study at the Toronto General Hospital found that "recreational drugs can dangerously alter the pharmacokinetics of protease inhibitors and other antiretroviral agents."

The prescribed medications can inhibit or accelerate metabolic pathways used to break down other drugs. The combinations have been linked to overdoses of MDMA (Ecstasy) and GHB; the inability to metabolize LSD, ketamine (Special K), methamphetamines and phencyclidine (PCP); and heightened withdrawal symptoms from methadone.

"Interactions between agents commonly prescribed for patients with HIV and recreational drugs may be associated with serious consequences," concludes the report, published in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy. "Clinicians should encourage dialog with their patients to avoid compromising antiretroviral efficacy and increasing the risk of drug toxicity."

In a related story, reported in the journal AIDS Weekly, researchers at the University of Kentucky at Lexington found that methamphetamine combines with an HIV protein described as a "virotoxin" to damage the nervous system by depleting a crucial neurotransmitter. The authors warn that people with HIV who use MA "may dramatically increase their risk of neurologic complications."

The use of recreational drugs and alcohol has also been consistently linked with unsafe sex practices and the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

CONDOM COMEBACKS

What to say when your partner doesn't want to use protection

The excuse:

"What are you worried about? AIDS is no big deal anymore."

The response:

"I'm sorry. I don't have sex with idiots."

COPYRIGHT 2003 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group