"Locked-in syndrome" from bad drugs?

July 7, 2011 10:31 AM

An underground chemist messed up a batch of -- something -- and caused an outbreak of locked-in syndrome (ie total paralysis) in, like, a half dozen people. I remember reading about this somewhere. (Was it in the Butterfly and the Bell Jar?) Does anyone know the whole story?

I think it happened in the 70s in the SF bay area -- centered on the peninsula. I probably have some of the details wrong but I'm sure I've got the gist. The silver lining was that this event led to an advance in understanding the chemistry of the brain, and some good pharmacological agents came out of the whole tragedy. Anybody have a link or reference for me?

posted by ACF to Science & Nature (7 answers total)

I don't know what it was, but it wasn't The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. That's a book by Jean-Dominique Bauby, whose Locked-In Syndrome was a result of a massive stroke.
posted by HighTechUnderpants at 10:35 AM on July 7, 2011

It was an outbreak of Parkinson's Syndrome associated with use of synthetic heroin. The tainted batches had MPTP rather than MPPP, a close chemical relative. Here is a link. The outbreak actually provided more information about Parkinson's, and as I remember, at least one of the victims underwent a stem-cell transplant to repair the damage to his brain, providing an opportunity to test a new at the time technology.
posted by goggie at 10:36 AM on July 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think you're talking about this incident. Basically around the dawn of designer drugs there was a relatively-easy-to-mess-up synthesis pathway which led to this impurity, a chemical which causes something like Parkinson's.
posted by doteatop at 10:37 AM on July 7, 2011

There was also that incident in the late '80s where a batch of L-Tryptophan sold as a dietary supplement was linked to an outbreak of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome.
posted by straw at 10:46 AM on July 7, 2011

Yeah, the Diving Bell and the Butterfly was just about one person and it happened in France.
posted by cranberrymonger at 12:02 PM on July 7, 2011

Yeah, goggie has it. I'm a neuroscience grad student and it's kind of a standard teaching story. It was a terrible accident that also lead to some serious scientific progress. MPTP is taken up specifically by dopaminergic cells in the substantia nigra where it is metabolized in to a different chemical that kills the cells. Idiopathic Parkinson's is very similar, in that it is the dopaminergic cells of the substantia nigra that die. MPTP can be used to induce a model of Parkinsonism in animals in which to study treatments.
posted by Cygnet at 12:54 PM on July 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

Just to point out that the OP wonders if they read about the drug-related episode in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", not wonders whether the book is an account of the episode in question; as in, Bauby might have mentioned it in his book.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 9:22 PM on July 7, 2011