What is the EXACT fatal dose of Sumatriptan (Imitrex) in mg's for a 15 year
old person, 136lbs?

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Clarification of Question by willroberts-ga on 17 Feb 2003 08:19 PST

Can you please find out for me what it is? I paid you 20 dollars, you
could call the poison control center for me. thank you.  it is
important for research purposes.

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Request for Question Clarification by aceresearcher-ga on 17 Feb 2003 23:22 PST

willroberts,

You have not paid any money for this Question (other than 50c to post
it). Google Answers does not charge the fee until and unless the
Question has been Answered.

aceresearcher

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Clarification of Question by willroberts-ga on 19 Feb 2003 22:50 PST

please contact the poison control center and find out what the fatal
dose is of Imitrex, sumatriptan for a 15 year old adolescent. 136lbs.

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Clarification of Question by willroberts-ga on 22 Feb 2003 21:54 PST

You haven't responded to my question. PLEASE contact the poison
control center or a "suicide hotline" about my question. once again:
fatal dose of imitrex (sumatriptan) for a 15 year old person, 136lbs.

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Request for Question Clarification by umiat-ga on 24 Feb 2003 09:15 PST

willroberts-ga

 I am sorry that no one has answered your question. I will speak for
myself when I say that your urgency for an answer, the terms "suicide
hotline" and "fatal overdose" make me a bit worried about your intent
in asking this question. I don't think any of us here at GA want to
encourage any harmful intentions.
 If your question is truly for "research purposes," it would cost you
absolutely nothing to contact a poison control hotline yourself.
 I truly hope you are not intending to use this information for
harmful purposes.
 Please do not be angry.......I suggest that if you are contemplating
any use of a fatal dose for yourself, or someone else, that you ask a
question for information concerning where you might find some help in
other areas.

 Only a suggestion because we truly care about our questioners here on
GA!

umiat-ga

This information does not seem to be generally available.  It might
possibly be obtainable from a Poison Information Centre.  The size of
a fatal dose would depend on the route of administration (inhaled,
injected, oral?).  Also, it is not possible to give an _exact_ dose,
because this will be affected to a greater or lesser extent by
differences between individuals.  For example: there is a report in
the medical literature of death due to cardiac complications in an
adult who had migraine, but was otherwise healthy. The patient died
after taking a single 100-mg dose of oral sumatriptan. (Doses up to
300 mg are used in practice).
"Fatal cardiac arrhythmia after oral sumatriptan."  Laine K, Raasakka
T, Mantynen J, Saukko P.  Headache 1999 Jul-Aug;39(7):511-2
The authors emphasize that cardiac symptoms are only noticed in 3-5%
of patients given sumatriptan and that serious incidents are mostly
observed after injection and in patients with heart-related risk
factors.  Obviously this patient was an exception, but nevertheless
did die.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11279937&dopt=Abstract

The other problem here is that clinical trials of drugs are designed
to determine nonfatal doses of drugs, not fatal ones.  Thus, they are
set up with a purpose of not killing subjects - I seriously doubt
anyone actually knows what a fatal dose of the drug would be.  It's
the exact opposite of what the studies are designed to show.
librariankt

Precisely.  That is why the only possible source is a Poison
Information Centre, because they do share information on fatal and
near-fatal incidents and the dosages involved, and do hold estimates
for lethal doses of some compounds.  As a matter of fact, even animal
LD50 values (dose required to cause death in 50%) are not readily
available for this drug, although they would have been determined in
the course of pre-clinical testing.

A poison centre might or might not have this information. It could be
that nobody knows what the dose is that would definitely be lethal in
a human.  You would probably need to route your enquiry through a
clinical biochemist or forensic toxicologist, as it is highly unlikely
that the poison centre would give out this sort of information to just
anyone.

So far you have only been charged the 0.50 listing fee.  You will only
be charged the full 20 dollars if a researcher chooses to provide an
answer to your question.

Since such a fatal dosage of sumatriptan is generally only found in
suicide cases, perhaps a suicide hotline center would have this type
of information?

There are a list of suicide hotline centers around the nation at
http://suicidehotlines.com/  Perhaps you could try calling one of them
to see if they have this information available?