Prevention of toxicity from oral cocaine by activated charcoal in mice

To study the effectiveness of activated charcoal in preventing toxicity after an enterally administered cocaine hydrochloride overdose in mice.

A prospective, randomized, controlled animal laboratory investigation.

Fasted mice were given aqueous cocaine hydrochloride (0.8% final concentration) 100 mg/kg body weight orally by gavage tube. One minute later, animals received one of three treatments by gavage: 1 g activated charcoal/kg body weight, 2 g activated charcoal/kg body weight, or an equivolume of water (control). All treatments consisted of 20 mL/kg body weight of an activated charcoal slurry with water.

After 24-hour observation, proportions of seizures and deaths between each group were compared using Pearson chi 2 test followed by Fisher's exact test (P < .017 for significance after Bonferroni's correction).

There were 20 seizures and 16 deaths in the control group (20 mice). There were four seizures (P = .0004) and one death (P = .0004) in the 1-g activated charcoal/kg group (ten mice) and five seizures (P = .0018) and three deaths (P = .015) in the 2-g activated charcoal/kg group (ten mice).

In this mouse model, activated charcoal decreased the incidence of seizures and death after an enteral cocaine hydrochloride overdose.