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- Leah Betts died of drinking water to counter drug's
effect
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Correspondent
Leah Betts, the teenager who collapsed after taking an
Ecstasy tablet, died as a result of drinking too much
water, which made her brain swell.
Doctors who treated her at Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford,
Essex, where she was taken after lapsing into a coma at
home during her 18th birthday party, will tell the coroner
that "water intoxication", and not an allergic
reaction to the drug, was the cause of death. The inquest
into her death is to open in Chelmsford today but is expected
to be adjourned.
The coroner will receive a post-mortem report by the Home
Office pathologist Dr Paula Lammis. Water intoxication
occurs when a person drinks so much water - a minimum
of three litres - that the blood becomes diluted.
Laboratory results show that on admission to hospital
hours after taking the 10 pounds tablet, Leah's plasma
sodium level - a measure of how dilute her blood had become
- had fallen to 126 millimoles per litre compared with
a normal range of 134 to 145.
As a result, water was sucked into her brain cells under
osmotic pressure, causing them to swell. This increased
pressure on the brain stem, resulting in coma and death.
Overheating and dehydration are known risks of taking
Ecstasy, a stimulant which can keep young people dancing
for hours, and drug agencies advise users to drink plenty
of water and take frequent rests.
Although she had not been dancing energetically for hours,
it is understood that when Leah began to feel unwell at
the party she made repeated trips to the bathroom to drink
water. She believed mistakenly that this was the way to
ward off the ill-effects of the drug.
Leah's case attracted national attention after her parents
tried to alert young people to the dangers of drug-taking,
releasing a photograph of her in intensive care. At Prime
Minister's Question Time yesterday, John Major expressed
sympathy for the girl's parents. Experts said yesterday
that a single pill of the drug could not have poisoned
her and was highly unlikely to have caused an allergic
reaction.
Analysis of blood samples has also shown that the pill
was not contaminated, as earlier speculation had suggested.
Friends who took the same pills were unaffected.
Dr John Henry, director of the National Poisons Unit at
Guy's Hospital, said "I am not aware of anyone who
has died as a result of an acute allergic reaction to
Ecstasy. Her low plasma sodium level makes her death much
more explicable. She drank a lot of water but with a lack
of understanding of why she needed to drink water. Water
is not an antidote to Ecstasy, it is an antidote to dancing."
Dr Henry said Ecstasy led to compulsive behaviour as well
as blocking the body's normal signals indicating thirst
or tiredness. "There have been cases of teenagers
drinking too much water before," he said.
Dr Peter Berridge, a consultant anaesthetist at the Royal
Oldham Hospital who has treated Ecstasy users, said powerful
stimulants such as Ecstasy triggered release of ADH, a
hormone that slows the action of the kidneys, even when
excess water is in the body.
"Water intoxication can occur after drinking as little
as three litres. Under these circumstances, it causes
headache, nausea and vomiting," he said.
"Leah Betts died after just one [Ecstasy] tablet
- she drank too much water whilst the drug stopped her
body disposing of it. It may be she set out not to disgrace
her parents. When she started to feel ill she thought:
what could she do, and she started to drink water."
Dr Berridge said the advice from drug agencies to young
people to drink plain water could have fatal consequences,
as in Leah's case. They should drink water or soft drinks
with salt added at the rate of two teaspoons per litre
or isotonic sports drinks.
If taken in excessive amounts these could lead to swelling
in the body tissues but would not cause swelling of the
brain because the salt would maintain plasma sodium levels.
"Young people going to raves should take a two-litre
bottle of pop with four teaspoons of salt added.
It can be water or pop, flat or fizzy, anything they like.
It doesn't taste too salty. "It is not realistic
to rely on young people saying 'No' to drugs. There is
no way we are going to stop them using drugs. We have
to limit the harm drugs can do." |
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