Neurologists at two Miami hospitals recently treated a college student who appeared to have suffered a posterior spinal artery aneurysm the night after taking ecstasy. The incident is the first an aneurysm has been linked to a recreational drug.
After a night of partying, the college student from Florida woke up and was experiencing severe upper back and neck pain. He ignored the symptoms for several days, but finally told his parents when his neck stiffness, headaches, and nausea were unbearable. He was taken to a nearby emergency room for examination.
The case report was published on Thursday in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery. In discussing the first reported case of posterior spinal artery aneurysm linked to recreational drug use, the authors also noted that ecstasy was also linked to stroke, inflammation of arteries in the brain, and brain bleeding. It can also cause a sudden spike in blood pressure as well as an increased risk of rupture in existing aneurysms or other arterial abnormalities.
The college student told the doctors that he used ecstasy a week earlier. They suspected the student had cerebral vasculitis - swelling in one of the brain's arteries - as a result of the drug use and was transferred to Jackson Memorial Hospital to undergo more complex tests. The doctors there found he had blood in his spinal fluid, which led them to believe that an aneurysm was bleeding.
Dr. Dileep Yavagal is an interventional neurologist at Jackson Memorial Hospital. He treated the college student and expressed that they were lucky to find the aneurysm in the posterior spinal artery because such arteries are about a millimeter in diameter. He believes the aneurysm happened due to a flood of serotonin caused by the ecstasy. Such an occurrence would dramatically raise the blood pressure and affect the arterial walls.
"The evidence suggests the drug may not have caused the aneurysm, but if there was a weakened area in the posterior spinal artery, it can expand and rupture," said Dr. Yavagal in this Live Science article.
If the aneurysm bled into the membranes surrounding the spinal cord, the student could have become a paraplegic or quadriplegic, Dr. Yavagal also noted. However, because the student's prior drug history is unknown, the doctors don't know whether it was a result of extensive drug use, one-time use, or simply due to a weaker area in the spinal artery.
Whatever the case, the student is lucky to be both alive and healthy.
You can read more about the ecstasy-induced aneurysm in this CBS News article.
