Putting cocaine use and cocaine-associated cardiac arrhythmias into epidemiological and clinical perspective

Abstract

This is the first article in a series of three articles on cocaine-related cardiac arrhythmias, following on from the 2008 British Pharmacological Society Winter Meeting Clinical Section Symposium entitled 'Cocaine induced cardiac arrhythmias - from ion channel to clinical treatment'. We will summarize the epidemiology of cocaine use across the world and in particular will focus on UK, Europe and US use prevalence data. We will discuss the acute cardiac and non-cardiac toxicity associated with cocaine and highlight the lack of data on the true UK prevalence of acute cocaine toxicity and on the incidence of cocaine-related cardiac arrhythmias.

Figure 1

Cocaine annual use prevalence – top 10 countries in the world, adapted from the UN World Drug Report 2009 [1] Data are for those aged 16–59 years for Scotland and England and Wales; 15–64 years for Spain, USA, Canada, Italy, Northern Ireland and Australia; 12–65 years for Argentina and 18–66 years for Monaco. Data are reported from 2004 for Canada, 2006 for Scotland and Argentina, 2007 for Australia, Northern Ireland, Monaco, USA and Spain; 2008 for England and Wales and Italy

Figure 2

Annual prevalence rates of cocaine use in England and Wales for those aged 16–59 years. Adapted from the UN World Drug Reports 2007–09 [1, 7, 24]