Problems of Forensic Sciences 2008 Vol. 75 (LXXV) 268-275
ACUTE INTOXICATION WITH TIBETAN PILLS
Ewa GOMÓŁKA1, Tomasz GAWLIKOWSKI1, Anna KRÓL1, Wojciech LECHOWICZ2
1Chair of Toxicology and Environmental Diseases, Collegium Medicum, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
2Institute of Forensic Research, Krakow, Poland
Streszczenie
This article describes a case of acute intoxication of a 17 year old female patient with a preparation sold as a natural slimming agent in the Tibetan Medicine Centre in Krakow. The patient supposedly ingested 20 Tibetan pills (“number 160”) at the same time. Upon admission to the Toxicology Clinic, the patient was diagnosed as having symptoms of acute intoxication with a psycho-stimulating substance. The patient denied having taken such a type of drug. Analysis of the patient’s urine and suspected pills gave positive results for derivatives of amphetamine (> 2000 ng/ml) and ecstasy (> 1000 ng/ml). This analysis was performed with the EMIT enzymatic method using a Siemens Viva-E instrument. Confirmation analysis, which was carried out by the HPLC-DAD reference method, did not confirm the presence of amphetamine and ecstasy in the analysed material. Application of the GC-MS method allowed identification of the tablets’ active substance – phenfluramine – a slimming agent which was withdrawn from the list of medicines approved for sale due to cardiovascular side¬effects. In this case, symptomatic treatment was applied. Normalisation of heart rate was achieved within 4 hours and after 3 days the patient was discharged from hospital in a state of general good health.
Słowa kluczowe
Intoxication; Phenfluramine; Tibetan pills.