The changing pattern of paraquat poisoning in man

Abstract

The clinical and pathological findings are described in 14 patients who died between 6 hours and 26 days after drinking paraquat. Respiratory failure and delayed pulmonary fibrosis have become the hallmark of this poison, but were not the common mode of death in this series. Toxic myocarditis, renal tubular necrosis and centrilobular liver cell damage were significant factors in the eight deaths which occurred within 5 days of paraquat ingestion. Similar abnormalities plus respiratory failure caused the two deaths which occurred 5 and 6 days after consumption of the poison. Respiratory failure was the sole cause of death in only four patients who died 8 to 26 days after drinking paraquat, although the lungs showed pathological changes in all cases. The patients who died in multisystem failure, with one exception, had drunk larger quantities of paraquat than those who survived for a longer period and died in respiratory failure.

Postmortem Analyses Unveil the Poor Efficacy of Decontamination, Anti-Inflammatory and Immunosuppressive Therapies in Paraquat Human Intoxications

“…These authors suggested that a rapid accumulation of PQ into the heart in the early stages of exposure may play an important role in acute death. Toxic myocarditis was also reported by other authors in humans as resulting from PQ intoxication [46], [47], [48]. Povoa et al [49] reported that cardiac toxicity due to PQ is frequent (40%).…”

Death due to Poisoning - a Medicolegal Study at Dhaka Medical College, Dhaka

“…In South-East Asia, chemicals such as paraquat, parathion, acetic acid used for rubber preparation and Opium, diazepum, barbiturate are also used for self destruction. A study in India has shown that dichlorvos (76% EC) is also used as injectable suicidal agent [8][9][10] .…”

Estudio histopatológico de las lesiones hepáticas inducidas por paraquat

“…Sin embargo, las publicaciones en relación con la descripción de las lesiones histopatoló-gicas que aparecen en el hígado son mucho menos numerosas y aunque se han establecido a grandes rasgos las principales alteraciones microscópicas [4,5,6,7], la interpretación del desarrollo de las mismas así como sus características histopatológicas no concuerdan en muchos casos con las lesiones que se observan en el hígado de los sujetos que han muerto como consecuencia de la ingestión de paraquat.…”