







Doctors say a flesh-eating homemade drug that was developed in Russia and the Ukraine has made its way to Missouri.





Krokodil is made with gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, codeine and other chemicals and it produces a high similar to heroin. Doctors in St. Louis began treating a man last December who had been injecting the drug for eight months before he was brought to St. Mary's Health Center in Richmond Heights.

Known as a "zombie drug" in Russia, over 100,000 people have been reported to have shot up Krokodil since 2011. Some people in bigger cities told authorities they thought they were buying heroin and ended up with the flesh eating drug that literally makes a users skin take on a crocodile like appearance before it rots off.

Doctors in Arizona, Ohio, Illinois and Oklahoma have reported similar incidents but detecting the drug is difficult at this time because there is no diagnostic test for it.



Diagnosis is usually based on tell-tale lesions that appear at injection sites on the skin that gives it the appearance of crocodile scales because the body quickly metabolizes the drug's psychoactive agent, desomorphine.





Authorities say they haven't seen or heard of the drug making an appearance yet in Stone County.





R Doctors Dany Thekkemuriyil and Unnikrishnan Pillai treated a user in December in the emergency room of SSM St. Mary's Health Center in Richmond Heights, who had been using Krokodil for eight months prior to being seen. “We saw that his finger fell off and we saw a severe looking ulcer and sores on his thigh and it did really fit the picture of Krokodil,” Thekkemuriyil said to KTVI-TV in St. Louis. The doctors reported their findings to the American Journal of Medicine in February “Our case is the first case that's been published in a recognized medical journal.” Krokodil, also know as desomorphine, can cause extensive tissue damage, and cause infections that turn soft tissue into decomposing flesh similar to gangrene at the injection sites. - See more at: http://hiphopwired.com/2013/11/15/flesh-eating-krokodil-drug-appears-u-s/#sthash.CEyEqhO3.dpuf ead more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/11/15/4623215/st-louis-hospital-says-man-used.html#storylink=cpy



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