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SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- An increasing number of drug addicts looking to get high or manage withdrawal symptoms are abusing an over-the-counter anti-diarrhea medication with sometimes deadly results.

The Upstate New York Poison Control Center at Upstate Medical University saw a seven-fold increase in calls related to abuse or misuse of Immodium and other anti-diarrhea products containing the drug loperamide between 2011 and 2015. The center covers all of upstate north of Rockland County.

People addicted to opioid drugs, including presciption painkillers and heroin, are abusing Immodium because loperamide is an opioid, said William Eggelston, a pharmacist at the poison control center.

When people take loperamide at recommended doses they don't get high because only a small amount of the drug is absorbed in the blood, then broken down in the liver before it gets to the brain, Eggelston said.

People who abuse the drug by taking 100 to 200 tablets a day get high from the toxic levels in their system, he said.

But they run the risk of dying in the process because Immodium overdoses can cause abnormal heart rhythms.

"It's low cost, there is easy access and it's ripe for abuse," Eggelston said.

Eggelston described two loperamide overdose deaths in a paper published last week in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Eggelston declined to say if the deaths occurred in Central New York, but indicated they are representative of what is happening nationwide.

The first case involved a 24-year-old man with a history of drug abuse found unresponsive in his home. Six empty boxes of an anti-diarrhea medication were found at the scene. He had no pulse when emergency personnel arrived. They started CPR and administered naloxone, a drug that helps reverse overdoses, but neither treatment worked. He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at an emergency room.

The second case involved a 39-year-old man with a history of opioid addiction who collapsed at home. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the ER. The man's family told medical providers he had been self-treating his addiction with over-the-counter anti-diarrhea medication after discontinuing bupreorphine, a drug used to treat addiction.

It is important that doctors and other medical providers recognize this emerging phenomenon and ask patients about loperamide abuse, according to the paper.

Eggelston said pharmacies should be required to regulate the sale of loperamide-containing products in the same way they restrict other abused over-the-counter medications like pseudoephedrine, or Sudafed.

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