Recreational Drugs and Pandemic Flu

[mixin]

Some time ago, Gs sent me a link to one of Racaniello's blog posts about interferons and secondary pneumonia after influenza. His post ended with: "Nevertheless, it might be possible to avoid secondary bacterial pneumonia by treating influenza patients with drugs that inhibit type I IFN."
http://www.virology.ws/2009/06/05/interferons-secondary-pneumonia-after-influenza/

So I searched for drugs and type I INF and found this study: Cocaine causes increased type I interferon secretion by both L929 cells and murine macrophages. "Here, we present evidence that cocaine stimulates the secretion of an antiviral product that is neutralized by anti-interferon (anti-IFN). These findings further support our previous research demonstrating an antiviral activity of cocaine in vitro. The relevance of this activity to viral infections in general remains to be determined."
PubMed http://tinyurl.com/pk9p3h

That surprised me because I really hadn't thought about how cocaine impacts our immune system. We have a lot of crack/powder cocaine usage in my area but that particular aspect never crossed my mind. My county is also the #1 meth producer in the state and the cost of removing the chemical residue left behind in homes from meth production can run into thousands of dollars.

Then I had to wonder about all the other drugs we use recreationally (US leads the world in that type of drug usage) and I found a lot of other studies on how drugs affect our immune systems. For instance, anabolic steriods may have a negative effect for women's immune systems due to hormonal imbalance. Then it's estimated that in 2007 almost a million kids used inhalants; I suppose the type of chemical in the inhalant would determind any damage to the lungs/immune system.

Then I took my speculation further and wondered if there was any connection between drug usage during wartime and pandemics. I was really shocked at the amount of drug usage during the 1918 period. I haven't found much yet about the Korean war but Viet Nam and Agent Orange always stay in my mind.

If anyone is interested further, here are the threads I started at gs's forum. Anything can be brought over here, too.

Drug studies link http://www.setbb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=897&mforum=fluwiki2

Diseases and drugs that cause immunosuppression http://www.setbb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=905&mforum=fluwiki2

Drugs in History: http://www.druglibrary.net/schaffer/History/e1910/8000_lads.htm (a lot of others besides this one)

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Recreational Drugs and Pandemic Flu

In the interest of possibly motivating the population to avoid damaging recreational use, I'd think someone might accumulate statistics about drug use and H1N1 outcomes.

Good subject for further research by FT hounds.

.

 

[mixin]

Re: Recreational Drugs and Pandemic Flu

Paco is a byproduct from the process of transforming cocoa leaves into paste. It's similar to crack, that's so popular here among the lower income drug users. Crack addicts often make pipes from stolen car antennas; they cut them into short pieces, stuff a small piece of brillo pad into the pipe as a filter, then the piece of crack goes in last.
When a landlord finds little pieces of brillo pads in the living room carpet of a rental house, it's a very good indicator there are drugs being done in the house.

Drug dealers often offer crack free to get new customers; apparently, they are doing the same elsewhere.

Snips from Ironorehopper's post #68 in the "WHO warns of severe form of swine flu" thread http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123151&page=3
---------------------------
Coca for those who can, Paco for children
Paco Children Argentina: booming drug trade

Daily stories here in Buenos Aires, where Colombians and Mexicans have moved the refining of coca and then export it to Europe along with the Camorra.

In Argentina the clans for exploiting poor laborers, make a revolver with the competition, join the police are flooding the market and toxic waste production, which are reducing 70,000 healthy infants in paraplegics.

The UN estimates that Argentina is the second Latin American market for cocaine and derivatives traded...

Meanwhile, begins to talk about lowering the age attributable to 14 years.

Local news agencies, meanwhile, continue to beat news "kitchen" of coca burned, or when the police raided.

Inside, the paramedics and ambulance staff there are kids between ten and twenty, very poor, who were recruited by the narco-traffickers to the laborers of coca, a working class covert, capable of only one choice: smoking.

Thus, adolescent and pre-adolescents and missed the basic chemical experts become directly Grub Street, who stoned manipulate reagents such as acetone or ether, always on the boundary between the detonation and the transformation of basic cocaine paste, processed crude plant in hydrochloride of cocaine.

From this process, remains a large quantity of surplus poisonous and powerful, the perfect drug for the market low cost.

The laborers of narco-trafficking with a social profile identical to those from 2002 arriving at reception centers and clinics for recovery, "Children of 5 or 6 years destroyed by Paco, with severe malnutrition, impaired motor and lacerations of the lung are capable to make a lethal bronchitis, "says Gladys Madedu from 86 working with drug addicts now doting mother of Palomar, a house of Lomas de Zamora, a suburb south of Buenos Aires, with the affection which rehabilitated more than 300 children over the last years, and currently it houses a forty.

The mob had brought with her from Colombia but also the marketing strategies: how the basuco, paco has arrived here on stage and not cost anything, I was offered along with coca.

One gram of "goods" (cocaine) to 25 pesos (roughly 5 million) and a dose of paco at 1 peso (20 cents),

Inside a shipwreck on the shoals of domestic industry deadlocked for decades of LiberoMercato may get to live "2000-2500 families," packed in like chickens, "most unemployed for two or three generations, whose children are mostly consumers of paco.

Izaguirre cites figures that speak of 1,500 clandestine airstrips in the lowland and little control of the north argentinoe in, landing dozens of Cessna airplanes per day, with loads of 5 tons of pasta based on the average.