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The term "blue blood" has taken on a new meaning for a 25-year-old woman who visited an emergency room in Rhode Island with complaints of fatigue and shortness of breath, as well as the 39, a more unusual symptom: his blood had turned navy blue. .
The patient, whose report was documented in a New England Journal of Medicine case study, told doctors that she had used an over-the-counter medication to treat a toothache.
"I'm weak and I'm blue," she told emergency doctors.
Dr. Otis Warren, the emergency physician on duty at Miriam Hospital that night, diagnosed this woman with "acquired methemoglobinemia," a rare blood disease in which the body does not receive enough blood to get it. ;oxygen. Although the disorder may sometimes be of genetic origin, it was caused in a Rhode Island patient by taking in large amounts a drug containing benzocaine, a common ingredient of topical analgesics and sweets. against coughing.
New England Journal of Medicine
In 2018, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about benzocaine, recommending that children under 2 years old should not take products containing benzocaine. The agency also warned adults that benzocaine could cause methemoglobinemia, which could "put life at risk and cause death".
According to the FDA, there have been more than 400 cases of methemoglobinemia related to benzocaine since 1971.
After performing tests, the doctors found that hemoglobin and oxygen levels in the blood of Rhode Island patients were low, which could result in a risk of heart failure, coma or death. The doctors then gave him an antidote called methylene blue, which improves his breathing and gives a bluish complexion. By the time she left the hospital, her symptoms had completely disappeared.
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