Intoxicação por cocaína: hepatotoxicidade e terapias farmacológicas: uma revisão de literatura

Abstract

It is known that since the beginning of human history man has always sought to escape from reality in various ways, including in an attempt to change the state of his consciousness and this was achieved mainly through the use of substances. In the twentieth century, consumption of those substances grew and became a public health issue mobilizing society in the search for treatment of the etiology and also of the consequences of chemical dependency. Cocaine is one of the most commonly used recreational illicit drugs and appears as the most prevalent substance in the rates of chemical dependence. It can be used in a variety of ways, by various routes of administration, and has a rapid effect. The overdose of cocaine can cause toxic effects in organs such as the liver, kidneys, and heart. In the liver, hepatotoxicity is caused by the metabolites of cocaine with consequent consumption of hepatic antioxidant and increase of free radicals. Supportive therapies are well described for the treatment of cocaine overdose, and several works show beneficial effects of the use of drugs and herbal complexes. This work is a literature review built through the selection of articles in databases. Thirty eight articles were selected, most of them from Brazil, and most of them dated in the 2000s. It was possible to observe the scarcity of consistent and periodic epidemiological data, possibly related to issues of stigma of health professionals regarding the problem of drug use. In addition, it was also noted that there is a greater number of studies focusing on the toxicity of systems as a whole rather than the liver itself, which may affect the establishment of targeted therapy for liver recovery (of therapy aimed at liver recovery) in cocaine users in situations of overdose. Finally, a possible resolution of hepatotoxicity caused by cocaine was identified in the use of NAC