Cocaine’s Effects
Endocarditis related to IV drug use is common enough that doctors and researchers have given the condition a separate name: intravenous drug abuse (IVDA) endocarditis. This form of endocarditis typically occurs when an IV drug user shares a single IV needle with other drug users, or fails in any other way to ensure the sterility of a needle prior to drug use. As noted previously, compared to other forms of IV drug use, IV cocaine use has a significantly greater tendency to lead to the onset of IVDA endocarditis. According to a study published in 2004 in the Postgraduate Medical Journal (as well as a separate entry in the 2008 textbook Acute Coronary Syndrome: Multidisciplinary and Pathway-Based Approach), cocaine’s unique effects apparently stem from the drug’s ability to accelerate a user’s normal heart rate and produce damaging surges in a user’s normal blood pressure levels. Underlying these changes in cardiovascular (heart and blood vessel) health is cocaine’s excessive activation of the sympathetic nervous system, an involuntary system that usually helps the body avoid undue shifts in its internal environment. The heart rate and blood pressure changes associated with cocaine use apparently trigger tissue damage in the endocardium that makes the eventual development of infective endocarditis considerably more likely. In addition, cocaine use suppresses the immune system in ways that may contribute to the risks for infection in the endocardium or elsewhere in the body
