A patient developed fever, bronchoconstriction, hypoxaemia, pulmonary infiltrates, and serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid eosinophilia on two occasions after inhaling crack cocaine. Transbronchial biopsy specimens showed normal lung parenchyma but a dense eosinophilic infiltrate within the bronchial wall. Both episodes resolved promptly after treatment with corticosteroids. Eosinophilic lun...

Childhood maltreatment has been associated with addiction and immune dysregulation, although neurobiological substrates underlying this association remain largely unknown. The aim of the study was to compare plasma levels of adipokines during early abstinence in crack cocaine dependent women with (CM+) and without history of childhood maltreatment (CM-). One hundred four crack cocaine female us...

BACKGROUND Patients addicted to crack-cocaine routinely have difficulty sustaining treatment, which could be related to dysfunctional cerebral activity that occurs in addiction. OBJECTIVE To investigate the indirect electrophysiological effects of single transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on cocaine-addicted brains. METHODS The patients received either left cathodal/right anodal...

AIMS To examine whether neighborhood racial characteristics are associated with the under reporting of life time cocaine/crack use. DESIGN A household survey of high-risk communities with above-average admissions to state-supported drug and alcohol treatment programs. SETTING Chicago, Illinois, USA. PARTICIPANTS A total of 303 adults. MEASURES Self-reported use of cocaine/crack during a...

We submit here an unusual case in which a user of crack cocaine presented with progressive dyspnea of subacute duration and was subsequently found to have concurrent pericardial and pleural effusions and pulmonary emboli. To our knowledge, there is only one prior case report that describes a potential causal relationship between crack cocaine and the development of a pleural effusion, via an eo...

BACKGROUND Cocaine abuse is a serious and socially damaging illegal drug problem. Different routes of administration are associated with a specific progression of use, different degrees of abuse liability, propensity for dependence and treatment response. There have been relatively few studies comparing different cocaine users groups and no studies into the characterization of the group of indi...

A novel method for preparing and testing bending specimens in-situ the TEM has been developed. This method provides high visibility of the crack front and its associated plastic zone. This is significant because energy release rates can now be calculated at many points throughout the test based on crack tip opening displacement (CTOD), crack opening angle (COA), and crack advance. Further refin...

In this work, the plastic deformation mechanisms responsible for mechanical properties and fracture toughness in nanotwinned (NT) magnesium is studied by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The influence of twin boundary (TBs) spacing and crack position on deformation behaviors are investigated. The microstructure evolution at the crack tip are not exactly the same for the left edge crack (LEC)...

There is growing evidence of the public health and community harms associated with crack cocaine smoking, particularly the risk of blood-borne transmission through non-parenteral routes. In response, community advocates and policy makers in Vancouver, Canada are calling for an exemption from Health Canada to pilot a medically supervised safer smoking facility (SSF) for non-injection drug users ...

Crack cocaine use is associated with risky sexual behaviors and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. We investigated sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics and infection rates in female crack cocaine users from impoverished communities of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. A sample of 125 female crack cocaine users was recruited. Overall, the interviewees had low educational le...