Prevention of toxicity from oral cocaine by activated charcoal in mice.

Abstract

To study the effectiveness of activated charcoal in preventing toxicity after an enterally administered cocaine hydrochloride overdose in mice. A prospective, randomized, controlled animal laboratory investigation. Fasted mice were given aqueous cocaine hydrochloride (0.8% final concentration) 100 mg/kg body weight orally by gavage tube. One minute later, animals received one of three treatments by gavage: 1 g activated charcoal/kg body weight, 2 g activated charcoal/kg body weight, or an equivolume of water (control). All treatments consisted of 20 mL/kg body weight of an activated charcoal slurry with water. After 24-hour observation, proportions of seizures and deaths between each group were compared using Pearson chi 2 test followed by Fisher's exact test (P < .017 for significance after Bonferroni's correction). There were 20 seizures and 16 deaths in the control group (20 mice). There were four seizures (P = .0004) and one death (P = .0004) in the 1-g activated charcoal/kg group (ten mice) and five seizures (P = .0018) and three deaths (P = .015) in the 2-g activated charcoal/kg group (ten mice). In this mouse model, activated charcoal decreased the incidence of seizures and death after an enteral cocaine hydrochloride overdose.