HEART ATTACKS Study: Ephedrine closely linked to death

Healthy animals' heart rates skyrocketed after consuming the ingredient.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
New animal research being published later this month more closely links the dietary supplement ingredient ephedrine with sudden death from heart attacks.
Dr. Philip Adamson, an associate professor of physiology and cardiovascular disease at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, reported on the findings last week during a science news conference presented by the American Medical Association.
The federal Food and Drug Administration banned the ingredient from store shelves last spring after it was linked to more than 150 sudden heart-attack deaths in recent years, many of them among younger adults with no symptoms of heart disease.
Findings
"Ephedrine mimics the sympathetic nervous system, the part of the nervous system that makes the heart beat stronger and faster. In past experiments on obese, otherwise healthy individuals, ephedrine did not raise their heart rates when they were either at rest or exercising," Adamson said.
"When we gave healthy animals ephedrine, we found exactly the same thing. But the moment they developed a blockage in their heart artery, which we are able to cause reversibly in the lab, their heart rates went through the roof," the researcher said. "It was the response to ischemia, a condition where there is a blockage of the heart's blood supply that was exaggerated by ephedrine."
The experiment is being detailed in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
In ischemic heart disease, blood vessels to the heart become constricted, causing damage to the heart muscle. But sometimes, the condition develops without any symptoms, leading to a sudden heart attack.
For the study, started before the FDA ban, the researchers went to local health-food stores for ephedrine supplements and gave the lab animals doses as recommended on product labels.