Medicine: Speed and Strokes

The elderly are most often victims of strokes—the circulation stoppages in the brain that can cause paralysis and death. Yet for five years doctors at the University of Southern California Medical Center have been noticing an increase in young stroke victims and looking for an explanation. Now they have found one. Reporting in the journal Radiology, a U.S.C. research team has disclosed evidence that methamphetamine, or “speed,” one of the most widely used of the current “pop” drugs, can cause deterioration of the small blood vessels of the brain.

Dye Path. A link between amphetamines and circulatory problems was first suggested in 1970 by Dr. B. Philip Citron. He observed the signs of widespread small-vessel deterioration in 14 young drug abusers, most of whom mainlined speed. Four of them died as a result. Observation of nearly 100 other patients since then has strengthened Citron’s initial theory.

A controlled experiment by a second research team has provided still more proof. Dr. Calvin Rumbaugh of the hospital’s radiology department had already examined 19 patients by cerebral angiography, an X-ray technique in which a dye is injected into the brain’s arteries to enable doctors to follow its path through the smaller blood vessels. The tests showed most of the patients to be suffering from occlusion, or blockage, of the small arteries. To determine whether speed could cause such damage, Rumbaugh and his team injected five rhesus monkeys with methamphetamine every other day for two weeks. Then the scientists killed and autopsied the five, plus two animals that had received no drugs but had otherwise been kept under identical conditions. Neither of the drug-free monkeys showed any sign of brain damage. But all five of the others, which had received speed doses comparable to those taken by many thrill-seeking youngsters, had irreversible brain damage in the areas around the small blood vessels—similar to the damage found in humans who die from strokes.